“All the Devils Are Here” is a Bottle Thriller That Misses the Bite
In the world of crime, loyalty is worth as much as a vault of gold. You need to know that your getaway driver, your muscle, every member of the team has each other’s back. Otherwise, things go sideways, and betrayal is a killer. Director Barnaby Roper’s All the Devils Are Here is a crime drama about honor among thieves. Unlike most crime films, though, the heist is not the point of this film. It’s the aftermath at a safe house that provides the basis for the interpersonal conflicts that arise among this gang of criminals.
Ronnie (Eddie Marsan) is ready to get out of the criminal business. The world is changing and he’s growing far too old to be running around with a gun robbing people. His boss (Rory Kinnear) offers him one final job, a simple money grab. Ronnie is teamed with Grady (Sam Claflin) and Royce (Tienne Simon), two younger guys who aren’t as jaded. As they’re making their getaway, they run into a person on a darkened road. The crew flees the scene and connects with Numbers (Burn Gorman), the accountant, before the foursome continue on to the safe house. They’ve been instructed to wait there until the boss sends word, staying inside the house at all times. As one can imagine, a group of criminals stuck inside a house is a recipe for things to go wrong.
Republic Pictures
The issue with All the Devils Are Here is not the fact that the majority of the crime action takes place in the first fifteen minutes of the film. The chamberpiece that has been created is compelling. To take this gang of people, riding high from the success of their robbery, and force them into hiding with one another is compelling. These men would not be spending time together were it not for the lockup imposed by their boss. Think about your coworkers. What would happen if you were stuck in a cabin with them for an indeterminate amount of time? You’d probably go mad, and that’s what these men do. The core group of four actors is an enticing collection of British talent. They bring their characters to life and the audience is immediately drawn to them, particularly the tension between Ronnie and Grady. They’re two sides of the same criminal coin. Ronnie is old-school, a believer in honor among thieves, and that violence is a last resort. Grady, on the other hand, enjoys the violence and couldn’t care less about any sort of morality code. The push and pull of these men is complemented by Numbers, who always seems to be hovering unnervingly in the background.
Where All the Devils Are Here struggles is in how to end this isolationist story of loyalty and distrust. Without spoiling it, the film ends in a way that doesn’t wholly negate the rest of the movie, but it sure comes close. What keeps the film from feeling like a complete wash is the performances, but even then, All the Devils Are Here doesn’t seem to have anything to say at the end of the day. When you write an ending that undermines what you spent the last hour building toward, where does that leave the viewer? All the Devils Are Here has the bones of a taut little bottle thriller, but it’s missing the flesh and blood needed to make this the rumination on morality in an amoral profession that it wants to be.
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