COPS AND ROBBERS

A-List Stars Bring Big-Screen Heist Drama to TV

“12 12 12” pits Anthony Mackie against Jamie Dornan in a European game of cat and mouse.

12 12 12’s opening shot is of a contortionist named Alberich (Julius Feldmeier) extricating himself, with great, limb-cracking difficulty, from a bank vault’s small security box. It’s a strikingly apropos summation of this Apple TV thriller, which twists itself into knots trying to orchestrate a grand heist.

Premiering on the streamer on Friday, Nov. 13, Jim Keeble and Dudi Appleton’s series reunites Synchronic stars Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie for a game of cops and robbers in Switzerland, where the former intends to steal a cool $800 million Swiss francs and the latter endeavors to thwart him. It’s a set-up as old as the Alps, and in its early stages, it’s executed with intricate, tantalizing urgency. As with so many like-minded TV efforts, however, there’s not enough to this tale to warrant eight episodes, and between its padding and its increasingly gimmicky temporal flip-flopping, it proves yet another show that would have been better off as a two-hour feature.

At the start of every 12 12 12 episode, FBI agent Jack Strickland (Mackie) explains that bank robberies take 12 months to plan and 12 hours to carry out, after which police have 12 days to catch them before they escape. While that explanation of the series’ title is handy, it grows wearisome by the finale, and it comes to epitomize the proceedings as a whole.

Repeatedly segueing between the heist’s preparation, execution, and “takedown,” Keeble and Appleton’s story uses its three-tiered structure for edgy suspense. Though it’s initially successful in that campaign, it falters once it becomes clear that, chronological stunts aside, it’s a rather straightforward affair, complete with periodic unforeseen crises, backstabbing betrayals, and ruses upon ruses perpetrated by the hunted and the hunter.

12 12 12’s heist begins on Christmas Day in Zurich, and the target is Lindehof Bank, whose vault contains the loot sought by Paul Galvin (Dornan), a master thief who’s well aware that Jack—whom he refers to as “The Holy Ghost”—is in the city and hot on his tail. Without much context, Paul sets his plan in motion with a team that includes his hotheaded and violent older brother Bobby (Jack Kesy), train expert Kira (Kali Reis), bank employee Gunda (Hildegard Schroedter), logistics expert Blasius (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), tunneler and driller Serge (José Garcia), undercover operative Ayah (Camélia Jordana), and supernaturally bendy Alberich.

Together, they’re a typical crew of crooks, and they run into immediate trouble when Albreich discovers an unexpected mercury alarm in the vault, sparking a dilemma that Paul amusingly strives to disarm with the aid of a YouTube tutorial video.

The nuts and bolts of Paul’s scheme slowly come into focus as 12 12 12 begins crosscutting between now and then, detailing that, a year earlier, Paul was living the high life in Marseille with pregnant girlfriend Severine (Agathe Rousselle) until a crime boss with her hooks in Bobby forced him to accept the job. Paul’s reluctance stems from his distrust of Bobby, a borderline psychopath who resents his younger (and smarter and more successful) sibling’s leadership, and it’s exacerbated by his fear of attracting law enforcement attention after a Newark job went awry.

That prior mishap is the motivation for Jack’s pursuit, since his colleague (and romantic partner) was assassinated during it. Jack is candid about seeking revenge against Paul, and he brushes off the incessantly annoying anti-American barbs thrown at him by Swiss cop Lena (Sallie Harmsen), whose primary role in the show is to be an insufferably smug plot device. Unfortunately, Mackie’s Jack isn’t considerably more tolerable.

The Captain America: Brave New World actor seethes, curses, and angrily chases his prey around multiple European cities, but he’s a vague approximation of previous no-nonsense, tortured do-gooders, and revelations about his true designs only further underline that he’s more construct than fleshed-out character.

That’s similarly true of Paul, who repeatedly expresses his devotion to Severin and reminisces about a formative Christmas Eve robbery with his dad, yet comes across as a blank. Dornan’s performance is too featureless to make Paul a super-intelligent bandit worth caring about, and Keeble and Appleton’s back-and-forth storytelling is likewise a vain attempt at adding novelty to a been-there, done-that saga. Paul and company’s burglary is complex enough to begat moderate interest. However, much of the later action is undercut by the fact that we’ve already seen what happens next—meaning there’s no question that its characters will avoid impending doom and escape the clutches of Jack and his comrades.

12 12 12 demonstrates the Herculean difficulty of maintaining taut tension for eight hours, and at one point, the series resorts to dramatizing incidents, conversations, and developments that don’t warrant entire scenes. One can easily imagine how much of this story a talented filmmaker could have condensed (without losing any key material).

Consequently, the show loses steam during its wannabe-rousing climactic passages. Moreover, despite spending significant energy on superfluous filler, it fails to sell its central relationships: Paul and Severine have no chemistry; Jack and Lena are a gratingly mismatched pair; Paul and Bobby’s dynamic is clichéd; and everyone else is merely a two-dimensional pawn whose moves are frustratingly pedestrian.

What’s most astonishing about 12 12 12 is that its central hook—namely, the relevance of the number 12 in bank heists—is just an affectation that has no bearing on the outcome of Paul and Jack’s face-off. Unlike so many of its streaming counterparts, the show is beautifully shot; whether in daylight, in the dead of night, or in dark subterranean spaces, its imagery has depth, richness, and clarity. That precision, alas, doesn’t extend to its elaborate clockwork heist, whose components are mildly engaging if nothing to write home about, and whose shootouts, car and foot chases, and fisticuffs are unremarkable.

Even those missteps might have been forgivable if it didn’t flail at the finish line, failing to concoct a closing surprise (or showstopper) that excused its dawdling. As it stands, though, it’s a caper that steals your time but not your attention.

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Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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