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

Detailed summary

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,…

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…

Tog…

Opening of the article, excerpted from Daily Beast. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.