Finding Steve McQueen

In 1972, five men robbed a bank in California where Richard Nixon was supposed to be hiding $30 million in illegal campaign contributions. the movie suggests this heist occurred in no small part because the ringleader, one Enzo Rotella (William Fichtner) thought Nixon was a piece of shit and wanted to stick it to him. Fair enough. I can't criticize someone for living that spite life.

Four of the men, including Rotella, were found quickly enough by the FBI (the lead agent played by Forest Whitaker). One of them, Harry Barber (Travis Fimmel), narrowly eluded capture, and then went to ground for 7 years working in a movie theater in a small town. Where he met Molly and they fell in love, and now he's confessing all this to her. And that's how the movie is presented, moving back-and-forth between their conversation in a diner, and the events of the heist. Also what Forest Whitaker and his partner, Agent Price were up to. Not sure how Harry knows those parts.

The movie gets its name because Harry's obsessed with Steve McQueen. Tries to look like him, drive muscle cars like him, rents the house the crew stayed in while they were prepping the heist with that name. He's nicer than McQueen is in most of his roles, though. Fimmel plays him as a nervous, over-eager goober. Wants to be helpful, generally nice, tries to look after his brother Tommy, who is back from Vietnam, but seems vaguely spaced out for the entire film. 

(I know he's high part of the time, but I don't want to assume he's always high. We only see him smoking once. I would have liked for the movie to tell us what happened to him.)

Which is useful, in that it makes him likeable, and also, you can believe eventually the strain of living a lie would get to him. He's not Steve McQueen in The Getaway, unflappably cool and ready to gun down anyone that gets in his way. He's just a guy who's kinda clever, and thought crime looked cool.

I don't want to make the movie sound depressing, because it's funny in places. The other guys in the crew are a couple of Seventies stereotypes and watching them bust each other's balls and say dumb shit can be hilarious. There's a brief argument between them and some guys on a nearby golf course that cracks me up.