The romance is sweet, but the action is nowhere near plausible.
When I heard Liam Neeson was playing a criminal mastermind known as “The In and Out Bandit” in the new thriller “Honest Thief,” I was hoping against hope he got that moniker because he celebrated every successful heist by sending a big sack of In-N-Out Burgers to the frustrated feds. But this gray and brooding and plausibility-defying actioner is set not in California but in and around Boston, and Neeson’s Tom Carter has been given that name by the FBI because when he hits a bank in the dead of night and cleans out the safe, he’s in and out, just like that! As opposed to what, the Lingering Bandit, who takes his sweet time and waits until he hears sirens before making a run for it? Let’s also make it clear Tom Carter is nothing at all like the middle-aged-but-not-to-be-trifled with characters Neeson has played in the “Taken” trilogy, “The Commuter,” “Non-Stop,” “Cold Pursuit,” “Unknown,” “The Grey,” “Run All Night” or “A Walk Among the Tombstones,” OK? This guy is completely different from all those other stoic and rugged individualists who find themselves thrust into the most extreme circumstances imaginable and will do anything to set things right.
