Steve McQueen is a Hollywood legend and a pop culture icon. An enduring symbol of coolness, he became the biggest movie star in the world, starring in films such as Bullitt, The Great Escape and The Getaway. Finding Steve McQueen is not about the late actor, but you take one of his crime thrillers or heist films and add in a double serving of quirky and wild, and you come close to what this movie appears to be. Check it out:
With the combination of the romance element, the heist and the 'cat and mouse' game with law enforcement, I imagine the elevator pitch for this film could be True Romance meets Ocean’s Eleven meets Catch Me If You Can. Finding Steve McQueen looks like a positively weird and wild ride.
It’s always fun when you’re watching a trailer that feels absurd and is populated with ridiculous characters only to find out that this isn’t entirely the product of a deranged mind, but actually has some basis in fact. Such is the case with this trailer, because the film is based on the 1972 United California Bank Robbery, which is one of the largest bank robberies in U.S. history.
That knowledge adds a delightful level of incredulity to this trailer that is full of quirky characters in a stranger than fiction-type tale. The film seems to focus on Harry Barber, the heist’s getaway driver who escaped and eluded capture by law enforcement for some time. In Finding Steve McQueen he fancies himself a real life version of the kinds of characters Steve McQueen played on film.
Travis Fimmel looks positively hilarious in the role too, as someone smiling and bumbling his way through things. As we saw with his role as Ragnar Lothbrok on Vikings, he can really nail the trickster with a twinkle in his eye-type character. Although Travis Fimmel’s Harry Barber appears to have a bit less self-assurance than Ragnar Lothbrok.
For any heist film to be successful, you need to have a great cast of characters, and Finding Steve McQueen on paper looks promising in that regard. Alongside Travis Fimmel is Jessica Jones’s Rachael Taylor, the great Forest Whitaker and the under-appreciated William Fichtner, among others. It’s a great cast playing a wide range of eccentric characters, from the capable and serious to the inept and amusing.
The trailer is a sign that this heist film could be an entertaining romp so hopefully it can live up to the strength of its cast and the incredible true story upon which it is based.
Finding Steve McQueen comes from director Mark Steven Johnson, whose previous work includes the superhero flicks Daredevil and Ghost Rider. Finding Steve McQueen opens on March 15. Check out our release schedule to keep track of all the biggest movies heading to theaters this year.
