Alright so I just wrapped up Steal (2026), last episode on my way home and I got to be real with you, this show had me feeling all kinds of frustration at times, its all up and downs, it starts out with so much damn potential but somehow manages to completely lose itself by the halfway point, Sophie Turner and Archie Madekwe do their best to make this thing work even at the end she tried, the whole series feels like its trying way too hard to be clever when really its just messy and boring by the end of it, now dont think its completely boring because even when its on the floor it still throwing some punches, sucks because the setup actually sounded interesting when I first heard about it. You got this pension fund robbery where billions of dollars are getting stolen from regular working people who are just trying to retire someday, two office workers get stuck right in the middle, forced to help these criminals pull off the heist of there lifes, that could have been a really cool tense story about morals and survival but instead we get six episodes that four of them drag like crazy, characters who I stopped caring about halfway through because none of them felt real or interesting enough to give a damn about at all. The silent scenes are cool at first, they create this weird uncomfortable vibe but after a while it just feels like filling up space without actually adding anything useful to the story, by episode four I almost did not even finish it, witch is saying alot because I usually power through shows even when they get bad. You got to love Sophie Turner character Zara who felt real even trying to fight back at the end, not giving a sht anymore, everyone else either annoyed me or just were gone for whole chunks of the show without any explanation at all, the big twist at the end was okay I guess, I did not see it coming but I also did not really care by that point, the pacing killed all my excitement way before we got there, even with all that urgent music trying to make me feel something I was not feeling, Prime Video clearly spent some money on this thing, it looks solid, good visuals can not save a story that does not know what it wants to be or where it wants to go though, it just kept twisting itself into knots trying to look smart when really it was just confusing and kinda dull.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32499731/
- Platform: PRIME VIDEO
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The first episode actually starts pretty strong witch got my hopes up for what was coming next, we meet Zara Dunn who works at this investment company called Lochmill Capital, she seems like your average office worker dealing with average office problems, nosebleeds and boring meetings, until a group of armed thieves swarm the place and take everyone hostage during a busy trading day, the tension is real right from the start. Zara brings in this intern named Myrtle Clark right before everything goes to hell, showing her around the office, introducing her to Luke who also works in the trade processing department, then boom these criminals show up with guns and force everyone to freeze up and hand over there phones, witch escalates fast. The leader tells Zara and Luke to stand up because they can use the trading system, he makes Luke load a flash drive onto his computer with six trade accounts worth over four billion pounds, witch is when you realize these thieves are not here for petty cash, they want to steal peoples retirement money, billions from regular people trying to retire. Luke is freaking out the entire time while Zara stays calm and collected, makes you wonder if maybe she knows more about wth is going on, the robbers force them to sign off on these trades and send them to a custodian bank, the whole sequence feels urgent and scary because you can see how terrified everyone is, they are organized and efficient, they know exactly what they are doing witch makes them feel dangerous. At the end of the episode one of the employees manages to alert someone in a nearby building about the hostage situation, police show up, DCI Rhys and his team secure the area and start questioning everyone who had direct contact with the thieves, pretty standard procedure.
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Episode two is where things start falling apart for me but still ok because you would though they need to slow things down after such a banger opening, but the pacing just completely dies and never recovers, Zara got the five million pounds in her crypto wallet after the heist, she transfers it to an external cold wallet, yeah now days heist tv series been done around cold wallets, the show makes it seem like the money is physically inside this little device, witch is not how that works but lets leave the details aside. She runs around her apartment trying to figure out where to hide it, first behind the refrigerator then under the floorboard at her moms house in some old memory box, the whole sequence drags on forever, creates this subplot about her trying to keep the money hidden from the police but it takes way too long to get anywhere. Luke also got paid but he is panicking, wants to confess to the cops because he can not handle the guilt but you get something is off, something didnt go to plan. Zara tells him to shut up and not say anything or they will both go to prison for helping the thieves, Luke keeps freaking out and almost ruins everything multiple times witch gets old real fast, you can only watch someone panic for so long before you stop caring. DCI Rhys starts investigating the heist, he is dealing with his own problems because he owes one hundred thousand pounds to some dangerous people, needs to find the money quick, this subplot with Rhys and his debt could have been interesting but it never really goes anywhere, just feels like filler to stretch out the runtime. The episode also introduces this whole cryptocurrency thing where the stolen money gets transferred using Bitcoin, a lot of talk about cold wallets and blockchain addresses but none of it feels accurate or realistic, you could tell they were just throwing around buzzwords without really understanding how any of it works, Zara has to hide the device to protect the money but that is not how crypto works at all, the money is on the blockchain and the device is just a tool to access it, all the drama about hiding the device feels pointless but I get it they afraid someone might hack it or once they find it then take it for investigation and accuse her.
The middle episodes three and four are where I almost gave up on the show entirely, nothing happens and the characters just keep making stupid decissions over and over again because if there is a constant variable on this series is Zara taking the worst desicions you could imagine and done get me started with Luke who gets kidnapped by the thieves because he is too shaky and confess to Zara he is going to the police over the fkn phone and then call DCI Rhys to snitch. Zara shows up just in time to see him getting dragged away witch was some of the tense moments of the series, how it just keeps kicking and dont want to die yet. I never really care about Luke during the series because you could tell he is a lier and snitch. Flashbacks show us that Zara and others within her department were resentful towards Lochmill executives who were profiting from there work, here is where apparently Luke got approached by some people offering one hundred thousand pounds to help with the robbery on a Call of Duty session, sounds made up but if they know who you are I wouldnt find it impossible, Zara joined in after getting denied a promotion she deserved, so now we know she was in on it from the beginning, witch explains her calm behavior during the heist. What I enjoy the most about the series is how they really build up Zara character going from her apparently knowing nothing about the heist on episode one and just saving that girl when offering herself and even saving Luke's weak ass when he was in shock because he never though they were stealing 4 BILLION DOLLARS in pensions. We also get to know Zara way way more from her mom, how she had basically thrown her life away until that point and how the entire office thought she was the biggest looser of the entire floor trying to cope at partying every weekend. The show also introduces this character named Milo who apparently orchestrated the whole heist, has twenty million pounds hidden away but we barely see him until the very end so he didnt matter to the core of the story that is Zara, his character feels like an afterthought, there is also this financial investigator named Darren Yoshida who is supposed to be helping the police but is a bit dodgy and almost look like he didnt want to help at all.
The final two episodes try to wrap everything up but it all feels rushed and unsatisfying, there is a big shootout at the Lochmill office where Morgan is hunting down Zara and Luke, yup long story go watch the series but this all happen after she offers him Milos instead of hers witch has twenty million on it, they go to Milos place and force him to give up his safe and wallet, he tries to escape using pepper spray and gets stabbed in the chest, pretty brutal and he was the risk manager come on, peper spray vs man with a knife and guns. Luke tries to call the police but Rhys shows up and finds Luke out cold because he does not know what is happening, the other thieves realize Morgan is gone and head to Lochmill triggering a massive shooting and surprisingly no cops no nothing with automatic guns just blasting the place. Morgan starts taking down the other criminals while Zara creates distractions, Rhys gets shot during the battle but him and Zara manage to slip away, Zara goes back for the cold wallet and runs into Morgan but she tasers him repeatedly until he passes out witch felt anticlimactic, Morgan was supposed to be this dangerous villain but he gets taken down so easily, although this scene took so long I was actually rooting for Zara just because she was the underdog here, even took a few punches to the face and was still standing. After everything settles the media reports that Milo orchestrated the robbery and committed suicide out of guilt, stolen funds implicated thirty two high profile figures, the four billion pounds got returned to Lochmill, but then Rhys figure out that Darren Yoshida was the real mastermind who moved the funds to expose corruption in offshore tax havens, he kept ten million for himself as leverage to change the world or some shit, like that much money would change anything. Zara and Rhys confront him but they just let him go witch makes no sense, Rhys should have called the police and wait there or record him confessing something like that, this people ran out of creativity for sure, he literaly helped steal four billion dollars and got people killed, then Zara reveals she kept Milos twenty million dollar cold wallet for herself, this entire episode was such a back and forward of who is getting any money out of this without going to jail. Then magically Zara decides to walk away from Lochmill entirely to start something new, that ending is supposed to feel satisfying but it just feels hollow, Zara never faced any real consequences for her actions or did anything extraordinary to keep Milo cold wallet, she just put all in read and hope it landed on red by leaving the cold wallet behind on a stash and hope she could pack it up next day when she leaves the office. The show tries to paint her as this complex person who was forced into a bad situation but really she is just selfish, screwed over a bunch of innocent people then got away with it, by the end I did not care what happened to her or anyone else, the show never gave me a reason to care for any of these characters, they were all assholes making dumb choices, I gave this series a 6.5 / 10 and I hope it ends here because I dont see how they can do a Season 2 out of this story, just dont.
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