Masterplan

Stanley Tucci plays Roger, a career thief who decides the one score he's never pulled off, lifting the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, is the job he wants to go out on. He recruits two young accomplices, played by Simona Tabasco (The White Lotus) and Victor Belmondo, who happen to be his estranged children. Directed by Thomas Vincent (Reacher, Bodyguard) and co-written by David Wolstencroft (Spooks), it's a Gaumont / Amazon MGM co-production that landed on Prime Video October 16, right as actual thieves pulled a smash-and-grab at the real Louvre, which gave the marketing team a gift they didn't earn.

Tucci. That's the pitch and most of the delivery. He's wearing a stupid moustache, speaking in a lightly ridiculous accent, and generally having the time of his life playing a Euro-trash cat burglar who thinks he's smarter than he is. Tabasco brings the same jittery, slightly feral charm she had in White Lotus Sicily, and Belmondo (yes, that Belmondo lineage) does a lot with a thin part. Vincent shoots Paris and the Louvre like a tourism board, which sounds like a knock and isn't; the movie's a travel-mag fantasy and it looks the part. Wolstencroft knows how to plot a heist beat by beat from his Spooks years, so the mechanics click when they need to.

It's generic. Shockingly generic for a movie about stealing the most famous painting on Earth. The father/kids reconciliation arc is dropped in like it was mandated by a studio note, and it never earns the emotional weight the script keeps trying to collect on. The AV Club called the world "weirdly empty," and that's accurate, scenes have the production value but not the density of a real Ocean's picture. Micropsia noted it plays like a long pilot episode, and you feel it; the thing is paced for episodic TV, not a two-hour movie. There's no setpiece in it you'll be talking about Monday.

People who liked Role Play, the last Vincent/streaming heist swing, and didn't need it to be more than hotel-room viewing. If you watched The Tourist (2010) on a plane and thought "sure, fine," this is for you. If you want Rian Johnson density or Soderbergh cool, you'll be out by the midpoint. It's for a Sunday afternoon when the alternative is folding laundry in silence.

BACKGROUND TV is where this lives because the craft is competent, the star is charming, and the ambition tops out at pleasant. Nobody's lecturing you about anything, there's no sermon problem to flag, and that's to its credit; it also doesn't have much on its mind beyond "Tucci in a Louvre." Vincent directs it clean, Wolstencroft plots it clean, and the whole thing evaporates the moment the credits roll. Put it on, half-watch, don't feel bad about checking your phone. That's the job it's designed for and the job it does.