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This movie begins in war-torn Afghanistan, where a dweeby post-yuppie (you can tell by the wire-rimmed glasses) paces in a trailer while his female assistant sits before a computer. Stuff is getting real, you can tell by the sound of her furious typing and the “funds transferring” window on the computer screen. That’s a heck of an operating system the machine has, letting you continue to input as funds are transferring. Anyway, she soon says, “ Eees done , Meester Donovan . The moaney is secure .” And they pack up the laptop and hit the SUV, but wait, they’re ambushed, by, it turns out, Meester Donovan’s own security force, black op mercenary dudes of varying facial hair length. They are unhappy that Meester Donovan has tried to run out on them without paying them, and they impel their ex-boss to give him the name of one of the many banks where he’s scattered his hundreds of millions of ill-gotten war-profiteering dollars. And so he does, not before being told by one of the fellas “We’re not here to play games.”

And then they kill him. These guys don’t mess around. They even shot the woman with Meester Donovan in the back. As a foxy Interpol agent puts it, “These men do not panic. They adapt. And execute.”

Meanwhile, back in the states, high-school student Kenny (Michael Rainey, Jr.) in the midst of rather inexplicably making a cell phone video of himself entering the boy’s bathroom, is waylaid by three punks, one of whom tries to put his head in a urinal. Kenny is meek and Kenny is mild, but he gets off a fortunate punch just as an adult is walking in, and is sent to the principal’s office.

As punishment, Kenny has to do a “ride along” with some cops in his relatively crime-free Massachusetts neighborhood. One of those cops is Nicolas Cage , playing Mike Chandler, a Bitter Man In Widowhood Who Has Forgotten Why He Even Joined The Force. Mike’s partner is his son-in-law, Steve, who the morning of the ride along learns that his wife, Mike’s daughter, is pregnant with their first child.

By now you’ve probably guessed the location of the bank that the beardo mercenaries are gonna try to knock over, at which they will claim their prize of—this is great—ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Seriously, with all the explosives and weaponry these bozos have with them, the seed money for the heist had to have been half that. These super professional dudes roll into town screaming and cussing and doing the high-volume thing that most movie bank robbers know not to do, which is overtly call attention to themselves. Seriously, haven’t any of these idiots seen “ The Friends of Eddie Coyle ”?

It is fated that Disillusioned Cop, Disillusioned Cop’s Son-In-Law, and Innocent Ride Along Kid must confront this evil, and so they do. This movie has been variously self-described as “in the vein of ‘Black Hawk Down’ and ‘End of Watch,’” and “based on the true story of one of the longest and bloodiest events in police history.” I guess the “ Black Hawk Down ” comparison derives from the many gaping wounds the characters and the extras suffer. I don’t know where the rest comes from; because all told this effort is a cavalcade of crap. Loud crap.

The movie is mercifully brisk though; you don’t even get to work up a good head of steam against the villains, which may leave you feeling empty by the movie’s end.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Rated R for violence and language throughout.

Nicolas Cage as Chandler

Sophie Skelton as Lisa MacAvoy

Michael Rainey Jr. as Kenny

Dwayne Cameron as Steve MacAvoy

Cory Hardrict

• York Alec Shackleton

Cinematographer

• Alexander Krumov
• Ivan Todorov Ivanov
• Frederik Wiedmann

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211 Reviews

It's an action film. I was going to say action and intrigue, but these soon disappear. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 20, 2021

There are some competently staged shootouts surrounding the bank robbery, but those sequences are not enough to recommend the film.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2020

211 is an action heist film that comes off as taking itself very seriously which would work if it were a better quality film overall.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 12, 2020

The only real surprise here is that Mike repeatedly misses the opportunity to declare, "I'm too old for this shit." Watching 211, you'll sure feel that way...

Full Review | Feb 5, 2019

211 is a film that's loaded with improbably situations with a Nicolas Cage on autopilot. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 15, 2018

Adhering to a formula is one thing, but this cliché overload pushes 211 over the line that divides undistinguished movies from bad ones.

Full Review | Aug 14, 2018

211 could have used some of the actor's special brand of bug-nuts craziness. It would have considerably livened up what is a barebones action movie that moves quickly and doesn't do much other than present some competent but unexceptional gunfights.

211... is a shoe-in for worst film of the year, and frankly belongs in the conversation for worst films of the century thus far.

Full Review | Original Score: .5/10 | Jul 2, 2018

Nic Cage's latest DTV action endeavor is a bizarre slog.

Full Review | Jun 11, 2018

Despite a high body count and the expenditure of extraordinary amounts of ammunition, 211 is inert.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 9, 2018

... disjointed and emotionally hollow despite some trademark Cage theatrics.

Full Review | Jun 8, 2018

A muddled, overcrowded, trigger-happy heist movie brimming with clichs while constantly trying our patience.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 8, 2018

A cavalcade of crap. Loud crap.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Jun 8, 2018

A bunch of generic types get into a massive shootout in 211...

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 8, 2018

For collectors of [Nicolas] Cage insanity, I am sorry to say that your hero has come up painfully short here - this is as bored and listless of a performance as I have ever seen him give.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 7, 2018

It's probably foolish to wish that Nicolas Cage would once again make movies as good as Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas. But is it too much to ask that he go back to the comparative glory days of Con Air and The Rock?

Full Review | Jun 7, 2018

Unsurprisingly, the director doesn't get very good work from a cast asked primarily to ramp up the intensity on stereotypes.

Even the subset of Nicolas Cage fans who like it when the actor makes laughably terrible movies will have trouble sitting through "211"...

I can't begrudge you waiting until 211 shows up on a Blu-ray at Walmart that also contains ten other Cage movies...But I can tell you that when it does, you shouldn't skip over this one.

A mortifying, poor showing for Cage. Classic film fans may remember when Buster Keaton was forced, in his later, near-destitute years, to do cameos in sixties beach party movies. This is worse.

Full Review | Jun 6, 2018

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‘211’: film review.

Nicolas Cage plays a veteran cop caught up in a gunfight with well-armed bank robbers in York Alec Shackleton's action thriller '211.'

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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It’s probably foolish to wish that Nicolas Cage would once again make movies as good as Adaptation and Leaving Las Vegas . But is it too much to ask that he go back to the comparative glory days of Con Air and The Rock ? The question comes to mind after seeing the latest mediocre B-movie actioner in which the scarily prolific actor squanders his considerable talents. Its title seemingly designed to locate it near the top of the VOD listings that will give it its highest profile, 211 mainly comes across like a pale, television pilot-style imitation of Michael Mann’s Heat .

Inspired by a notorious real-life 1997 North Hollywood bank robbery in which the police found themselves vastly outgunned by a pair of bank robbers, this film directed by York Alec Shackleton largely revolves around a similar protracted firefight. But while the blazing gun battle consumes much of the running time, John Rebus’ screenplay (based on one by the director) throws in plenty of subplots and essentially irrelevant characters to make the film feel padded even at 86 minutes.

Release date: Jun 08, 2018

We’re introduced to the story’s bad guys via a prologue set in Afghanistan, where a group of hardened mercenaries (Michael Bellisario, Sean James, Ori Pfeffer and Weston Cage, son of Nicolas) have been stiffed out of their money by a war profiteer. After promptly dispatching him, the group heads to America to reclaim the money that has been deposited in a bank. Along the way, they’re pursued by a relentless Interpol agent (Sophie Skelton) who seems to belong in another movie entirely.

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During their heist, the robbers are forced to take hostages when their suspicious getaway car is noticed by a pair of local cops — hard-boiled veteran Mike (Cage), who, like every older cop in movies, is just days away from retiring, and his younger partner Steve (Dwayne Cameron), who also happens to be Mike’s son-in-law. Just prior to the violent events, Steve informs Mike that his daughter (Amanda Cerny), from whom he’s estranged, is pregnant. The two cops also have a guest, Kenny (Michael Rainey Jr.), a black teen who’s been ordered to ride along with them for a day as punishment for violently striking back at one of his classmates who’s been bullying him.

Despite their attempt to distract the police by setting off an explosion at a nearby diner, the villains soon become engaged in a brutal, elongated battle that involves plenty of automatic weapons. Along the way, they demonstrate their ruthlessness by killing several hostages and innocent bystanders, sometimes out necessity and other times simply for kicks. At one point, Steve gets shot in the leg, resulting in a dying scene so drawn-out it would make Camille blush.

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The film awkwardly tries to infuse emotionalism into the graphically violent proceedings via the relationship between Mike and Kenny, which starts out as resentful but winds up as one of mutual respect when the teenager rises to the occasion and becomes a key figure in the action. None of it feels remotely authentic, including the coincidence that Kenny’s mother happens to be a nurse at the hospital where several of the cops are being treated.

Director Shackleton stages the ultra-violent mayhem with reasonable proficiency but little flair or imagination. And the less said about the dialogue, which features such gems as Cage barking, “Let’s take these assholes out!” (as if his fellow officers have something else in mind as they fire away), the better.

While Cage effectively underplays throughout, he does have a terrific meltdown scene in which Mike berates a superior for not providing back-up sooner. It’s the sort of enjoyable over-the-top moment that the actor’s fan base lives for, but it’s scant compensation for the overall mediocrity of this rote action movie.

Production companies: Momentum Pictures, Millennium Media Distributor: Momentum Pictures Cast: Nicolas Cage, Cory Hardrict, Michael Rainey Jr., Dwayne Cameron, Ori Pfeffer, Weston Cage, Sophie Skelton, Alexandra Dinu, Amanda Cerny Director: York Alec Shackleton Screenwriter: John Rebus Producers: Jeffrey Greenstein, Jonathan Yunger, Les Weldon, Isaac Florentine Executive producers: Avi Lerner, Trevor Short, John Thompson, Scott Karp Director of photography: Alexander Krumov Production designer: Editor: Ivan Todorov Composer: Fredrik Wiedmann Costume designer: Anna Gelinova Casting: Luke Cousins

Rated R, 86 minutes

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Where to Watch

Nicolas Cage (Mike Chandler) Sophie Skelton (Lisa MacAvoy) Michael Rainey Jr. (Kenny Rastell) Dwayne Cameron (Steve MacAvoy) Weston Cage (Luke) Cory Hardrict (Hanson) Ori Pfeffer (Tre) Mark Basnight (Police Chief) Amanda Cerny (Sarah) Michael Bellisario (Hyde)

York Alec Shackleton

While on a routine patrol, an aging cop, his partner and their ride-along, get caught in a standoff with a band of former mercenaries robbing a bank.

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•   June 5, 2018
•   Chris Luciantonio
•   Reviews

Film Pulse Score

It is a blessing and a curse that the Internet’s favorite actor, Nicolas Cage, is currently trapped in a say-‘yes’-to-literally-every-script phase of his career at least a decade after it peaked. Whenever a new one of his projects anonymously materializes onto a streaming service every month, those indoctrinated into the meme cult of Cage have to approach each of these spontaneous releases with a lot of reservation.

York Shackleton’s 211 at first seems like a promising premise, casting the mercurial Cage as a patrolman – weeks from retirement – who’s embroiled in a desperate struggle against a group of war-profiteering militiamen turned bank robbers. Even so, the potential always exists with these forgettable entries on Cage’s ever-expanding IMDb page that this could be a humble production for which his trademark craziness shines through or a paycheck, plain and simple, for the aging actor so that he may purchase more fossils.

211, to its credit, has the veneer of competency in how it sets the stage for the climactic bank heist standoff, which gives the film its title. There’s noticeable economic consideration for how all of the threads of Shackleton’s at-times-needlessly-convoluted script contribute to adding dramatic tension to the sprawling action set piece that takes up the greater half of the film’s closing acts.

After we are introduced to the four-man squad and how an industrialist has put the payment to their PMC in a holding bank, Shackleton wastes no time establishing his dramatis personae in rapid expository succession to ensure they all will somehow influence the bank heist that sold you the ticket in the first place.

I would call it a very film-school approach to a studio blockbuster heist film where the script feels so calculated, as if the metrics came straight out of the pages of “Your Screenplay Sucks!” If it weren’t so fatally lacking any personality and charm, I would have hoped it got Shackleton an A for his MFA program.

What would have made 211 more tolerable is if it were made several decades earlier. Not just for the sake of a younger and more sprightly Cage, who’d be able to enunciate his words much better than this checked-out Cage can, but also so that the sea of tired action film plot points from which Shackleton pulls would still have been relatively fresh.

Cage’s Michael Chandler is weeks away from retirement, and it would not surprise you to learn he is a widower; that his partner is his son in law; his daughter is expecting a child; and, on the day of the concluding standoff with the bank robbers, a wayward youth has been put into his care for the ride-along program.

Shackleton overloads his script with worn plot details to artificially ratchet up the tension, but he’s not ambitious enough to do anything with them then to play them straight. We have a fully formed narrative moving into the heist that will assuredly play with what it pangs itself to establish, but it rings hollow instead of sincere.

Who is Michael Chandler other than the most calculated TV-cop character to ever have graced the screen? Cage can’t and doesn’t attempt to breathe life into this propped-up list of cliched character motivations and performs without the pizazz or passion that endeared him to us. It’s incorrect to say he’s on autopilot for this performance because he still tries and even gets a scene to scream at his superiors in a strange broken cadence.

Sadly these appear to just be the flickering embers of an extinguished bonfire as the rest of the film attests to a tempered performative Cage who cannot raise 211 up from the television miniseries it feels like. This level of enthusiasm carries across all the bit players who Shackleton weaves around this besieged bank from the uppity branch manager who impishly challenges the militia on occasion to the troubled youth whose riveting plotline revolves around the wellbeing of his iPhone.

The action that the second half of the film embroils itself in is a rather illegible series of shootouts that get far too drawn out to be interesting. Shackleton appears to be a proponent of the digital-cinema approach to action films, which litters set pieces with disorienting artificial zooms and crosscuts that make charting his character’s locations in relation to space – and one another – a fool’s errand.

Chandler and the ride-along Kenny get separated in the parking lot while under fire, as a SWAT operations base is hurriedly put together to deal with the threat, and for the life of me I couldn’t tell where any of these people or things were geographically, relative to the focal point of the bank. His action becomes indecipherable, and all his attempts to install this tension from overprepping his script with dramatic bargaining chips fail accordingly.

211 proves itself to be of the lesser-spiralling Cage films that think his presence alone can elevate unremarkable, paint-by-numbers thrillers to cult-approved schlock. With (an assumed) five more Cage films expected to hit theaters or streaming services before winter, you’re better off gambling on one of those wildcards than with this run-of-mill heist film. Though tightly plotted, there’s not a hint of personality beneath the withered-cop setup that even causes the star to disappointingly reel it in.

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211 (2018) - movie review.

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[tab title="Movie Review"]

Nicolas Cage plays a retiring cop in professional snowboarder turned director York Alec Shackleton’s  211 , a fictionalized version of one of the deadliest (and bloodiest) bank heists in America’s history. Haven’t heard about this one yet? Cage made like five films last year alone that you’ve probably never heard about either. This one, without a solid presence from Cage as Officer Mike Chandler, will be another that you can add to the list.

Chandler is a bit ostracized from his family. He put his career as a cop before everything and lost his wife to cancer and his daughter, Sophie Skelton as Lisa, to his own cluelessness. While his daughter’s husband, Dwayne Cameron as Steve (also a cop), is on his side, there is a limit to what repairs he can make in their relationship. Yet, on the day of this bank heist, there’s news of a pregnancy to share with Chandler. Things are looking up.

Until they don’t. 

With an On Demand release date of June 8, this Eastern European-shot film from Millennium Films and Nu Image Bulgaria wants to be the next  Heat .  The performances, with Cage only raging one time, keep it from being much of anything.  The movie swings for the fences; however, and rolls out aimlessly.  Its ambition is untidy. Shackleton’s  211  hopes to also bring in the  End of Watch  audience. If those poor souls are anything like me (who tries to support Cage in whatever he is in), they are bound to be a disappointed by this ADR’d to the maximum release of loose ends and greatest bullets.

Beginning with a 10-minute shootout as a group of pissed off soldiers try to get what they consider theirs in Afghanistan, the movie can be a wicked puzzle to put together. This group of men get double-crossed in the middle east and must go to America in order to get their money. The marching orders are pull of a bank heist and get away; it becomes a messy affair. But I’m not just talking about the actual heist.

There are lots of moving pieces in the film’s many start-ups which, unfortunately, shortchanges the actual story. Cage might headline the movie, but his character takes a backseat until the first part is nearly finished. You see, we’ve got pieces of lives that we have to put together. On the fateful day of the well-armed heist as random characters are introduced, we get unplanned and unnecessary scenes with bank managers at home, the coffee barista getting tipped, and so on to distract us from the weak storyline that has been placed around the events in the narrative.

We needed a movie that hit us hard with the action and left all the extra weight of additional characters on the cutting room floor. In fact, the only extra character this film needed was Chandler’s ride along passenger, Michael Rainey Jr. as Kenny, who has just been suspended from school for beating up another student who was bullying him. Instead we get the principal suspending him, his mother, and his cell phone which, unfortunately, goes nowhere fast.

You thought this was a movie about police brutality and cell phones, didn’t you? That’s what the trailer would have you believe.  211 , though, is not; it doesn’t even really make any comments on cell phones that are worth a damn. It, much like everyone in this prolonged shootout, just ducks and try to stay alive.

Outnumbered and outgunned,  211  is a certified dud.

[tab title="Details"]

MPAA Rating: R. Runtime: 98 mins Director : York Alec Shackleton Writer: York Alec Shackleton Cast: Nicolas Cage, Sophie Skelton, Michael Rainey Jr. Genre : Action | Crime Tagline: Memorable Movie Quote: "Shots fired. Shots fired." Theatrical Distributor: Momentum Pictures Official Site: Release Date: June 8, 2018 DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: No details available. Synopsis : Bank heist movie in the vein of "End of Watch" meets "Black Hawk Down"

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Film Review: ‘211’

Bad guys hold up a suburban U.S. bank on cop Nicolas Cage's watch in this almost laughably generic, Bulgaria-shot thriller.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

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If you count the Sundance premiere of “Mandy,” Nicolas Cage has had no less than five films released in a span of five months — and 2018 isn’t half over yet. Quality doesn’t usually accompany such quantity, though in fact, three of the five (“Mom and Dad” and “The Humanity Bureau” as well as “Mandy”) have been pretty damn good. Balancing things out have been derivative thriller “Looking Glass” and, now, derivative crime meller “ 211 .”

The latter’s publicity materials make a great deal of the film being inspired by a 1997 shootout between the LAPD and bank robbers. But apart from the huge amount of gunfire exchanged, there’s scant resemblance between that event and what’s depicted in York Alec Shackleton ’s feature, which comes off as a rote, overstuffed compilation of genre cliches with pedestrian handling of action elements and frequent notes of maudlin contrivance. Nor does it help a generally unconvincing atmosphere that the whole enterprise, while set in a fictitious U.S. burg, was shot in Bulgaria.

The notably drawn-out and bloody altercation which took place in North Hollywood, Calif., two decades ago, began when two heavily armed perps (who’d met as bodybuilding enthusiasts at Gold’s Gym) found police already gathering outside as they tried to exit a Bank of America branch they’d just robbed. Both were eventually killed, but not before they’d wounded 12 cops, eight civilians and damaged a great deal of property in the immediate area.

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Here, however, the script, credited to John Rebus, based on Shackleton’s screenplay, immediately begins piling on more complications than it can handle by opening the action in Afghanistan. There, a quartet of murky multinational mercenary types (Ori Pfeffer, Sean James, Michael Bellisario, the star’s son Weston Cage) ambush a white-collar war profiteer who was about to flee without paying them their share of ill-gotten gains. They massacre his entire security team, then the man himself once he’s revealed part of the loot was deposited at an American bank.

Next thing we know, these bad hombres are planning to storm said bank in the city of Chesterford — although since they’re willing to kill anyone and everyone on a whim, it makes little sense that they’d take the trouble to target that specific institution.

Meanwhile, grizzled cop Mike Chandler (Cage), still reeling from his wife having recently died of cancer, is sharing a squad car with Steve MacAvoy (Dwayne Cameron), the husband of his semi-estranged daughter (Sophie Skelton). She’s just found out she’s pregnant, which makes everybody happy. The men are less happy to learn they’ve been saddled with another youthful surprise: black teen Kenny (Michael Rainey Jr. from Starz series “Power”). He’s been ordered to get scared straight via a ride-along as punishment for fighting, even though he was defending himself against school bullies. Further clogging the roster of simplistically etched characters are several more cops, including a comedy-relief duo and second-billed Cory Hardrict, whose character remains stubbornly peripheral.

Once our protagonists accidentally find themselves as the first police on site at the crime scene, the goons double-down on rough treatment of hostages while firing wildly at anyone in the bank’s vicinity. One might well wonder why, if the villains are such experienced, globe-trotting paramilitary types, they create a bloody mess sure to keep the maximum number of lawmen glued to the scene, rather than negotiating an escape. In any case, none of the subsequent high body count makes much impact, because Shackleton evinces no particular flair for staging action. Further, even those victims that aren’t simply extras are so superficially etched that we have no emotional investment in their fates.

There are additional factors that tip “211” from mediocrity toward the near laughable: crudely sentimentalized heroes; inexplicable dialogue choices, such as when one evildoer gratuitously informs the already cowering, terrified hostages, “We’re not playing games today!” And Mike and Steve yell the name of their imperiled ride-along so often that we expect someone to exclaim, “They killed Kenny! You bastards!!”

Former pro snowboarder Shackleton does an uneven job passing off the Bulgarian locations as a generic U.S. suburb. More problematically, the script plays like a rough approximation of Americanisms learned from movies: The on-the-nose speech, paint-by-number characters, awkward mix of bloodshed and schmaltz, excess of name-checked hot-button issues (bullying, terrorism, racial profiling) each feel purloined from other, better cop thrillers. The result is too cluttered to be dull, but so inorganic that its emphatic wrong notes often risk unintentional humor.

Unsurprisingly, the director doesn’t get very good work from a cast asked primarily to ramp up the intensity on stereotypes. One can’t blame Cage for appearing disinterested, with the exception of one nice bit — perhaps the sole quiet, well-written scene here — where Mike has a brief squad-car heart-to-heart with Kenny over the kid’s abuse by schoolmates.

While seldom credible, the film is nonetheless adequately assembled in tech/design terms, though its lack of aesthetic personality beyond basic slickness is underlined by composer Frederik Wiedmann’s routine action-pic bombast.

Reviewed online, San Francisco, June 4, 2018. MPAA rating: R. Running time: 87 MIN.

• Production: (U.S.-Bulgaria) A Momentum Pictures release of a Momentum Pictures and Millennium Media presentation. Producers: Jeffrey Greenstein, Jonathan Yunger, Les Weldon, Isaac Florentine. Executive producers: Avi Lerner, Trevor Short, John Thompson, Scott Karp. Co-producers: Gisella Marengo, Alain Jakubowicz.
• Crew: Director: York Alec Shackleton. Screenplay: John Rebus, based on a screenplay by Shackleton. Camera (color, HD): Alexandar Krumov. Editor: Ivan Todorov. Music: Frederik Wiedmann.
• With: Nicolas Cage, Cory Hardrict, Michael Rainey Jr., Dwayne Cameron, Ori Pfeffer, Weston Cage, Sophie Skelton, Alexandra Dinu.

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Directed by York Alec Shackleton

Your life can change in an instant.

Inspired by one of the longest and bloodiest real-life events in police history, Officer Mike Chandler and a young civilian passenger find themselves under-prepared and outgunned when fate puts them squarely in the crosshairs of a daring bank heist in progress by a fearless team of highly-trained and heavily-armed men.

Nicolas Cage Dwayne Cameron Michael Rainey Jr. Ori Pfeffer Sean James Michael Bellisario Weston Cage Coppola Sophie Skelton Cory Hardrict Pavel Vladimirov Sapir Azulay Derek Horse Alexandra Dinu Raymond Steers Katie Manning Keith D. Evans Nick Donadio Aaron Cohen Mark Basnight François Coetzer Fedi Bashur Aleksander Karastoyanov Jamieson Urquhart Laura Giosh Velizar Binev Atanas Srebrev Shari Watson Eric Ali Petar Mitev Show All… Stowe Blankenship Jordan Aboutall Brian Manning Brenda Galaz-Magyar Mackenzie Evans Vitaly Zdorovetskiy Sam Cig J.R. Esposito Amanda Cerny Jeko Bogoslovov Ivan Kaloshev Shauna Small Liza Mircheva Owen Davis Bleona Jonathan Yunger Maya Markova Orlin Pavlov Manal El-Feitury Rachel O'Meara

Director Director

York Alec Shackleton

Producers Producers

Isaac Florentine Gisella Marengo Jeffrey Greenstein Jonathan Yunger Les Weldon Alain Jakubowicz Brian Hayashi

Writer Writer

Story story, casting casting.

Luke Cousins

Editor Editor

Ivan Todorov Ivanov

Cinematography Cinematography

Alexander Krumov

Assistant Director Asst. Director

Vessela Bannzurkova

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Boaz Davidson John Thompson Lonnie Ramati Trevor Short Avi Lerner Scott Karp

Lighting Lighting

Yavor Zahariev

Camera Operators Camera Operators

Ivo Peitchev Georgi Raykov

Additional Photography Add. Photography

Ivan Vatsov Geo Ivanov Veselin Dimchov Hristov Iva Slavova

Production Design Production Design

Kess Bonnet

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Arta Tozzi Nikolai Nikolov

Special Effects Special Effects

Elena Zhekova Tsvetan Miladinov

Visual Effects Visual Effects

Aleksander Aleksiev

Stunts Stunts

Dessy Slavova Dian Hristov Ivailo Dimitrov Teodor Tsolov

Composer Composer

Frederik Wiedmann

Sound Sound

Daniel Ivanov Pierre-Yves Lavoué Ryan Nowak Kris Casavant Tapio Liukkonen

Costume Design Costume Design

Anna Gelinova

Millennium Media Nu Image Bulgaria 211 Productions

Releases by Date

Theatrical limited, 08 jun 2018, 30 may 2018, 01 jun 2018, 14 jun 2018, 20 nov 2019, 02 jul 2021, 23 jul 2018, 23 oct 2018, 07 nov 2018, 03 mar 2021, releases by country.

• Digital 16 VOD
• Physical 16 BluRay
• Theatrical הותר לבני 14 ומעלה נימוק: אלימות

Philippines

• Digital 18 Amazon Prime Video
• Physical 15 DVD
• Theatrical limited R

86 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by davidehrlich ½ 6

Unwatchable even by the subterranean standards of a direct-to-video Nicolas Cage thriller, director York Shackleton’s “211” is the kind of low-grade schlock that leaves you with a newfound respect for the basic competence that most bad movies bring to the table. Not even the opening credits feel totally credible, as they insist the film is “based on a screenplay” by the filmmaker, a point of attribution that doubles as a brutal self-own.

These are but a few of the many haunting questions that loom over “211”: “What?,” the more existential “why?,” and of course “wait… how the hell did this movie about war profiteers in Afghanistan suddenly become a heartwarming story about a black teenager who learns how to stop…

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★½ 2

While I was searching for something to watch, I found myself watching one of the many VOD movies with Nicolas Cage. My search led me to this one, which isn't great, but isn't terrible either.

You see, as a thriller movie this one doesn't really work at all. However, this might actually work well as the pilot episode for a series like NCIS or Chicago PD starring Nicolas Cage. While I wouldn't call it the best series ever or even as an episode in one of these crime procedurals this would still feel like a weak episode. However, I do enjoy these types of cop shows, so maybe I was biased. The performances are pretty uneven, though you got a…

Review by Rosie ★½ 2

I like movies that incorporate multiple plot points and have them intertwine but this suffers from too much setup for a bunch of main characters and storyline, it was convoluted and ineffective. But the one story that follows through more consistently was with Nicolas Cage as a bitter police officer, Mike Chandler, him and his partner/son-in-law, they have to do a ride-along with a young man and not knowingly head into an area where a huge bank heist takes place by a group of dangerous mercenaries. Cage was not interesting in this, underperforming and dull. Some cool shootout scene but the film was not competently made.

Nicolas Cage Film Ranked

Review by Wood ½

Wild this movie is 85 minutes and spends 30 of it introducing way too many characters, like 211 characters. Most of which do very little. It's late period Nic Cage so don't worry he's only got about 32 minutes of screen time. This is anti art, it's one of the most sterile and ugly non-movies ever. Clearly nobody wants to be on set, and nothing interesting happens to even justify making this.

Review by Badboy ★ 2

I thought this movie is about the big robbery with nicolas cage, I thought ok it must be good. but in the first scene I already realized that it wasn't and the thing only gets worse. WHAT A HORRIBLE MOVIE.

Review by NotAnnaFaris ★ 3

"IF YOU FKN DIE, I'LL FKN KILL YOU." Let's get Cage-d

SPOILERS BELOW *I'm not spoiler-tagging this review because 211 has a 4% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes for very, very good reason.

In 211 , should-really-retire-his-badge Mike (Cage) & his rookie cop-partner Steve (Dwayne Cameron) - who also happens to be Mike's son-in-law even though Mike & his daughter aren't on speaking terms (??) - are doing a ride-along with some highschooler, when they stumble upon a band of fkn militant mercenaries with automatic weapons & endless ammo mid-bank robbery. Let's just say, the Chesterford PD is in way over their heads with this one (yes, ChesterFORD 🙄).

Tbt, I've never been shot, & I'm sure it, like, really hurts & is really scary...& I…

Review by Matthew L. Brady ★ 2

"AND MY SON!!! IS DEAD!!! HE HAS!!! A CHILD!!! ON THE WAY!!!"

None of that was natural and it felt really force, but still an amazing little rage burst from Cage.

Review by Tyler Lake ★½

Hiring Cage to play a cop straight down the middle with nearly zero histrionics is incredibly sacrilegious, especially for a production that promises nothing. You’d think they might opt to play the one card they actually have, but maybe the big man just wasn’t feeling this one. Hard to blame him. He’s not exactly phoning it in if there’s no one to call.

Review by Nicholas Faron ½

Auto-pilot: The Movie

Review by #1 Bratz Fan ★★★ 2

The opening credits show that this was directed by York Shackleton, but based on a screenplay by York Alec Shackleton, and so the OPENING CREDITS are showing me two things I have never seen before. One, a filmmaker using a different name for different credits on a film, but not as a pseudonym. Although there has never been a name in history that sounds more like a made up name than York Shackleton. That’s the best name I’ve ever heard, and it’s real! Two, “based on a screenplay by”. That is not an awkward way of saying “written by” because the following credit is “screenplay by John Rebus”. So Shackleton wrote a screenplay for a movie he wanted to direct,…

Review by ELECTRICWIZARDx ★★★

That specific DTV actioner opener that consists of quick excursions to too many various multi-country set introductory plot points that will all come together later on with that fucking digital typing noise thing behind a shit font appearing telling you which country each section is in is like the cinematic equivalent to a blues standard and I hope it lives on forever.

This is as predictable and unnecessarily convoluted as it is fucking stupid in that the guy who would die in real life doesn't die and lives for his unborn child in the same film an average bullied young lad that doesn't need to be in the film because surely a bank-robbery-cum-terrorist-siege has enough tension, somehow charges his dead…

Review by Mos Co ★

Saw someone call this film 'sterile' and I think that sums it up quite well.

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211 (United States, 2018)

Perhaps a decade ago, snagging Nicolas Cage for the lead would have been a coup. Recently, however, Cage has been accepting anything with an attached paycheck. For that reason, director York Alec Shakleton is able to get a name to headline an otherwise anonymous cast. For his part, Cage sleepwalks his way through the part but even his comatose performance is light years better the ones provided by his co-stars. They vary from adequate (Sophie Skelton, Michael Rainey Jr.) to over-the-top (snarling bad guy Ori Pfeffer) to awful (Dwayne Cameron, whose line delivery is consistently awkward). Job #1 of any director is to draw an audience into the world in which his film transpires. The level of artifice in 211 is so high that we never believe anything that’s happening. It’s not immersive, involving, or particularly entertaining.

The movie opens with an extended, superfluous prologue that shows how a group of ex-Special Forces mercenaries come to possess information about the location of $1+ million in cash they believe to be rightfully theirs. So they travel to this bank in small-town America and stage a heist. It’s well-planned and involves a mock “terrorist attack” to distract the local cops. Unfortunately, Officer Mike Chandler (Nicolas Cage) and his partner, Steve MacAvoy (Dwayne Cameron), don’t respond to the call because they have a “ride along” in the back seat – high school student Kenny (Michael Rainey Jr.) – and they don’t want to put him in harm’s way. So, instead of going terrorist-hunting, they approach an illegally parked car. However, since this is related to the bank robbery, Mike and Steve soon find themselves involved in a shoot-out where they are outgunned. By the time support arrives, the bad guys have fortified their position and taken hostages.

Instead of focusing on the heist and spending time developing the crime, 211 throws in a bunch of half-baked, poorly developed secondary plotlines. Mike and his daughter, Lisa (Sophie Skelton), are on the outs because he was emotionally unavailable during his wife’s fight with cancer. Lisa, who is married to Steve, is pregnant. Kenny, the ride-along, is bullied in school and, when he fights back, he falls afoul of the institution’s “no tolerance” violence policy. Finally, there’s a female Interpol counter-terrorist expert (Sapir Azulay) who appears randomly with no apparent purpose except to issue dire warnings about how dangerous the bank robbers are.

211 includes the ingredients for a solid (if unspectacular) crime thriller but, as with any recipe, the difference between a palatable dish and a stomach-churning mess is in how those ingredients are combined and cooked. This movie is unappealing and stale, a barely-watchable combination of clichés and irrelevant tangents. The inclusion of Nicolas Cage is more of a reminder of how far he has fallen than how high 211 has climbed.

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Movie Review: 211 (2018)

• Dan Franzen
• Movie Reviews
• --> June 4, 2018

You know how, when you draw a bath and the water’s too hot to get into, so you let it sit there for a while but when you come back it’s too cold to get into, thus rendering it kind of useless? That’s what 211 is like. It’s tepid, lifeless, waste of time (if not talent).

The basic story is that of a bank heist in a small town in Connecticut. Nicolas Cage (“ Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance ”) plays the this-close-to-retirement cop partnered with a good guy who’s married to Cage’s character’s daughter, who’s just discovered she’s pregnant. Cage and partner MacAvoy (Dwayne Cameron, “Nice Package”) spot an SUV parked in a handicapped spot, and when they approach the illegally parked vehicle, all heck breaks loose. Adding to the chaos is the fact that the duo have been saddled with a ride-along named Kenny (Michael Rainey Jr., “ Barbershop: The Next Cut ”), who’s there only because he socked some bully at school.

Oh, and the bank robbers? Just the typical ex-special-ops soldiers with grudges, out to right a wrong with extreme prejudice. We learn this in the first scene, which provides the most interesting action in the movie, as the unit’s former commander or lawyer or something, who has just snagged millions of dollars electronically, is nabbed by said unit, whom said commander left for dead somewhere when things got hot. That whole scene sets up the heist and yet is infinitely more interesting than the heist itself.

The motivation for the robbers is nice information, but it’s ultimately not necessary information for the viewer to have. The tagline for 211 is that it’s a cross between “End of Watch” and “Black Hawk Down.” So obviously the robbery is the focus here. Four heavily armed banditos with a plan storm into this small-town bank, where their lawyer/commander/whoever stashed some of the funds he apparently owed them. Their plan: Take hostages, take money, shoot guns, and then leave. I mean, that’s about it. It’s not a complex plan, and I applaud them for keeping it simple, but it didn’t seem like they had a clear exit strategy (kind of like the US involvement in the Middle East, am I right?).

Back to Cage. So of course it’s his last days before semi-forced retirement. And of course his partner is married to his (Cage’s) daughter (Sophie Skelton, “Day of the Dead: Bloodline”). And of course the daughter is pregnant. Those contrivances don’t mean Cage is going to just delivered a half-assed performance! No, he’s going to full ass this one. I saw a lot of cheesy movies just like this in the 1980s. The acting in those movies, while not very good, would still outpace the acting here. This isn’t just mailing it in, this is shipping it via a container boat across the Pacific. There’s even the spectacle of a hyper, stressed Cage screaming that his “son is dead,” even though in the movie he doesn’t have a son. I mean, he has a son in law, but he wasn’t dead. Or maybe he was referring, obliquely, to his unborn grandson? Also not dead, but maybe if . . . Oh, never mind. I’m twisting myself into knots trying to find logic in a parallel universe where logic never even visits.

211 is a pretty abysmal film. Even the action scenes are pretty tame and uncreative. The acting veers from wooden to unhinged. It’s so bad that it’s no fun to watch at all, even as an instructive guide on how to make a crappy movie.

Tagged: bank , heist , partner , police , retirement , true story

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‘211’ Review: Nicolas Cage Stars in an Inept Heist Thriller Even By Straight-to-VOD Standards

David ehrlich.

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Unwatchable even by the subterranean standards of a direct-to-video Nicolas Cage thriller, director York Shackleton’s “ 211 ” is the kind of low-grade schlock that leaves you with a newfound respect for the basic competence that most bad movies bring to the table. Not even the opening credits feel totally credible, as they insist the film is “based on a screenplay” by the filmmaker, a point of attribution that doubles as a brutal self-own.

These are but a few of the many haunting questions that loom over “211”: “What?,” the more existential “why?,” and of course “wait… how the hell did this movie about war profiteers in Afghanistan suddenly become a heartwarming story about a black teenager who learns how to stop worrying and love white cops?”

Also, when the film’s IMDb trivia page says that “Nicolas Cage read the script in 2014,” was that the only time? And finally: “What the hell is a ‘211,’ anyway?”

Shackleton is actually kind enough to provide several different answers to that last question, though a little work from the audience is required to suss them out. First and foremost, “211” is a very VOD-friendly title for alphabetized pay-per-view menus. It’s also the number of plot lines that are squeezed into this movie’s interminable 87-minute running time, each of which contains 211 zombified line deliveries from actors who seem to be reading their dialogue off a tiny distant teleprompter.

Of course, a 211 is police code for a robbery — a robbery like the one that five heavily armed military bros attempt at a bank in small town America (unconvincingly played by a Bulgarian soundstage) after they’re stiffed on the bill for the dirty work they did in the Middle East. A robbery like the one that widowed cop Mike Chandler (Cage) responds to during one of his last days before retirement.

Poor Mike. He’s already having a morning , even before the goon squad of beardos rolls into his idyllic burg with assault rifles at the ready. First, the good news: His daughter (Instagram influencer Amanda Cerny) is having a baby! Mike gets the info secondhand, courtesy of his squad partner and son-in-law, Steve (Dwayne Cameron), and this delegation of duty makes for the film’s only nuanced emotional beat; even though Cage is borderline comatose for most of the movie, his clenched sorrow effectively sells us on the idea of a father who’s grown too estranged from his emotions to feel the magnitude of becoming a grandpa.

Mike is even less thrilled about the next curveball that comes his way: He has to host a ride-along with a kid named Kenny (“Amateur” star Michael Rainey Jr.). A bullied African-American teen who gets in trouble for punching back, Kenny is punished with a day in the back of a cop car. It’s a loaded place for any person of color to be these days, and only becomes more so after Mike laments the current state of police work (“Everyone’s got a camera, and everyone’s got a lawyer”). The racially charged dynamic between these characters is never made any more explicit than that — and they really only share a few minutes of screen-time —  but rest assured that Mike learns that black lives matter, and Kenny discovers that white police officers are people, too. It’s so nice how domestic terrorism brings everyone together.

All of this happens against the backdrop of a violent bank heist that’s staged with the clarity and purpose of a purse-snatching. We never learn a single thing about the thieves, nor are we given any reason to differentiate between them. One of the mercs has a bandana, maybe? Needless to say, we’re not on “The Rock,” anymore — character actors had faces, then. These guys just have really big guns, and they’re not afraid to use them. Of course, the only thing that can stop a bad guy with an AR-15 is a reaction shot of Nicolas Cage with a pistol.

It takes 40 minutes for the robbery to get underway (we naturally have to make time for the subplot about the globe-trotting Interpol agent who’s hot on their tail, and to introduce the rookie cop who’s slowing down the rest of the force), and mere seconds for the whole thing to sputter into nonsense.

Supposedly inspired by a 1997 Los Angeles heist that resulted in a firefight so extraordinary it convinced the cops to up their arsenals going forward, the ensuing shootout is basically “Black Hawk Down” on Main Street, but shot on a sitcom budget. There’s  no  attention to detail or character, nor or to the underlying conflicts between them — you might vaguely remember a sniper rifle and some business with a cell phone. Kenny’s mom is a nurse at the local hospital, so there’s another 10 minutes down the drain. It’s all just death and vamping.

Maybe the action was hobbled by the fact that Cage broken his ankle during shooting, or maybe it’s so dire because Shackleton lacked the chops and/or the time to keep things straight. Maybe Cage improvised his character’s immortal final line: “I’m gonna need some pics.” Maybe this is the kind of pay-for-hire project that affords him the chance to make stuff like “Mandy,” and we should just say “thank you” that he’s willing to shoot 211 pieces of garbage just like it if lets him shoot the moon every once in a while.

“211” will open in theaters and on VOD on June 8th.

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211 Movie Review

The Cop car ride along that drives head first into a lethal robbery.  ​Inspired by true events.

​Starring NICOLAS CAGE (Gone In 60 Seconds, Face/Off) and inspired by one of the longest and bloodiest real-life events in police history… 211 – which is police code for ‘robbery in progress’ – is a high-octane action-thriller that chronicles what it means to be in the middle of an unfolding crisis situation.

Mike Chandler (Cage) is a life-long veteran police officer ready to finally enjoy his retirement and a well-deserved pension. With his partner and son-in-law, rookie Steve at his side, and Kenny, a 15-year-old court-appointed ride-along reluctantly in tow, they set out on a routine patrol of the city’s streets.

The two officers and their young civilian passenger soon find themselves underprepared and outgunned when fate puts them squarely into the crosshairs of a daring bank heist in progress by a fearless team of highly trained and heavily armed men.

There are lot of Hollywood movies with incredible acting and visual effects out there. However, with a good message? Very rare. This movie is very good, and is a jewel ​amongst a load of Hollywood B movies.

The film starts out in Afghanistan and we see money being transferred to various banks around the world and to the US.  ​A gang of thieves decide to rob that bank when they get back to the U.S from their tour of military duty. The film then moves forward with a teenager being given an eye opener on hard core criminal life after being accused of bullying/ fighting (not his fault) in school. Kenny’s (Michael Rainey Jr) punishment is to go on a Ride-Along with officers Mike Chandler (Nicolas Cage) and his brother-in-law partner officer Steve MacAvoy (Dwayne Cameron). Meanwhile gang leader Tre (Ori Pfeffer) and his ​gang are about to commit the bank robbery ​they’ve been planning for so long.

Officer Mike notices a suspicious black SUV parked in the red zone near the bank and reports a 211 is in Progress (The police code for a robbery.)

The movie displays one of the bloodiest standoffs between the robbers, police and SWAT. There is an attempt to humanize things or make it more real with Kenny’s mom concerned about her boy on a Ride-Along. Moreover, she is the waitress in the restaurant where a bomb has been planted to act as an emergency services diversion so the police would ​attend there and not the bank.

​Other notable performances from Sophie Skelton as Lisa, Mike’s estranged daughter who just found out she is pregnant. Moreover, Alexandra Dinu as Interpol Agent Rossi, helps give some clues to the police, based on ​her own Afghanistan experience, she knows how Tre and his men operate.

Cage plays a good part in this movie.  In addition, ​there are awesome explosions where cars are lifted way off the ground.  With all that going on, and excellent pacing the film ​bloodily ​romps through to a high intensity climax .]

Reviewed by Neil Swain

Get a copy, watch it, let us know what you think.

Digital Download from 16th July Available to buy on DVD from 23rd July​

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