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Masterminds
Masterminds (2016 film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with the 1990s Patrick Stewart action-comedy Masterminds.
| Masterminds | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Jared Hess |
| Produced by | |
| Written by |
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| Starring | |
| Music by | Geoff Zanelli |
| Cinematography | Erik Wilson |
| Edited by |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Relativity Media |
Release date
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Running time
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94 minutes[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $25 million[2] |
| Box office | $29.2 million[3][4] |
It premiered in Los Angeles on September 26, 2016, and was theatrically released in the United States on September 30, 2016, by Relativity Media. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $29 million.
Contents
Plot
In March of 1997 Loomis Fargo & Company was robbed of about $18 million by a company security guard Philip Johnson. This gives Steve Eugene Chambers (Wilson) and Kelly Campbell (Wiig) the idea to also rob Loomis. They involve Loomis Fargo armored car driver David Scott Ghantt (Galifianakis).After some awkward training in preparation for the robbery, the team has David go inside the company's vault and load the vault's entire money supply into the company's van. Before he leaves, David takes out three CCTV tapes, but misses one. The next day, David flees to Mexico with $20,000 and takes the cover name "Michael McKinney", which is the name of a friend of Steve's. Steve, meanwhile, takes most of the heist, around $17 million.
FBI Special Agent Scanlon (Jones) and her partner (Daly) take the case, and immediately have David as the prime suspect, but have no idea of Steve's involvement. Steve plans to cut David loose but Kelly thinks it would be wrong to abandon him.
In Mexico, David narrowly escapes from the three Interpol agents looking for him, and then calls Kelly about what happened. Unfortunately, he inadvertently learns Steve's name from the ID in a wallet that Kelly gave to him. Steve then hires McKinney (Sudeikis) to find and kill David. He travels to Mexico, and attempts to shoot David, but the gun backfires and David escapes. David phones Kelly and learns that Steve is trying to kill him, and that Steve will not send the money for him as expected. David is then knocked unconscious by McKinney. When David regains consciousness, McKinney is about to kill him but reconsiders upon looking at "McKinney"'s birth certificate, thinking that David was born under the same circumstances; they become friends.
David calls Steve, threatening to surrender himself to Interpol if Steve doesn't wire $6 million into his bank account in two days. Kelly is then confronted by Jandice, who, learning of her engagement to David, attacks her. When Steve refuses to wire the money, his two friends kidnap Kelly after her escape from Jandice, and he tells David to get a ticket to South America in exchange for releasing her. At the airport, he meets McKinney, who is returning to the States, but as he bids farewell he sees Kelly's name written on his hand and he tells McKinney that he knows her. Realizing that he can't bring himself to kill her, they switch tickets just as the three Interpol agents show up but he manages to escape.
While Steve is hosting a party, the FBI puts a wire on one of the party members in an attempt to record Steve's confession. Unbeknownst to them, David sneaks in and rescues Kelly. They escape by stealing Steve's BMW but unfortunately the car is destroyed when they try to smash it through the front gate. Steve catches and assaults him, until David realizes he is near the FBI van with the agents inside. David tricks Steve into admitting that he was the mastermind of the whole plan, giving the agents enough reason to arrest all of them, including Kelly.
David is sentenced to seven years in prison, while Steve serves 11 years. About $2 million of the money is still unaccounted for. Upon David's release, he is picked up by McKinney and they drive to visit Kelly.
Cast
- Zach Galifianakis[5] as David Scott Ghantt
- Owen Wilson[5] as Steven Eugene "Steve" Chambers
- Kristen Wiig[5] as Kelly Campbell
- Kate McKinnon[6] as Jandice
- Leslie Jones[6] as FBI Special Agent Scanlon
- Jason Sudeikis[7] as Michael Aaron "Mike" McKinney
- Mary Elizabeth Ellis[6] as Michelle Chambers
- Ken Marino[6] as Doug
- Karsten Friske as Cort Chambers
- Dallas Edwards as Ken Chambers
- Devin Ratray[6] as Runny
- Jon Daly[8] as Detective
- Ross Kimball[6] as Eric
- Jordan Israel as Valet
- Njema Williams as Ty
Production
On February 1, 2013, Jim Carrey joined the cast.[9] On June 10, 2013, Owen Wilson joined the cast of the film.[10] On December 3, 2013, Zach Galifianakis joined the cast to replace Carrey after he dropped out.[11] On May 16, 2014, Kristen Wiig joined the cast,[5] and on June 25, 2014, Jason Sudeikis was added as well.[7] On June 30, 2014, Ken Marino, Kate McKinnon, Devin Ratray, Leslie Jones, Mary Elizabeth Ellis and Ross Kimball joined the cast.[6] On July 10, Jon Daly joined the cast of the film to play an FBI agent.[8] The film was produced by Brent Almond.Filming
The title used in media coverage was Untitled Armored Car.[12] Principal photography began on July 7, 2014, in Hazelwood, North Carolina in the Asheville area.[13][14] On July 29, Galifianakis was spotted in a prisoner's costume, during filming in the streets of downtown Asheville, which were made over.[15] The BB&T Center building, also the location of the production office, was transformed into the "Park Street Citizens Bank", with a Loomis Fargo burgundy truck parked outside of the entrance. The crew also shot the film on the steps of Buncombe County Courthouse, inside of the Buncombe County Jail, and in front of the Mediterranean Restaurant.[12][15]Release
The film was released in the United States on September 30, 2016.[16] The film was previously scheduled to be released on August 19, 2015, a date which, in July 2015, Relativity rescheduled to October 9, 2015.[17] The company pushed back the date because it was facing a financial crisis.[18] However, the film was then pulled from the October 9, 2015 release date[19] before being rescheduled to September 30, 2016,[20] on which date it was released.[16]Reception
Box office
Masterminds has grossed $29.2 million worldwide against a $25 million budget.The film was released in North America on September 30, 2016. The film was projected to gross $10 million from 3,042 theaters in its opening weekend.[21] The film made $2,325,546 on its first day. It went on to gross $6,541,205 in its opening weekend, finishing 6th at the box office.[22]
Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 31% of 74 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 4.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Mastermind's great cast and stranger-than-fiction true story are largely wasted on a scattershot comedy with a handful of funny moments and far too much wackiness."[23] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 47 out of 100 based on 29 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[24] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale.[25]Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine gave the film one-and-a-half out of four stars, mainly criticizing its lack of good jokes: "The laughs evaporate almost as soon as they land, and some (make that most) of them don't land at all.... Masterminds owes us our two hours back."[26] On the other hand, Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, stating that "If smart dumb comedies hold a place in your heart, you'll like 'Masterminds.'" Although he acknowledged the film's weakness in its length, structure, and pacing, he emphasized that "Most of the time in these kinds of films the notes of sweetness, naivete and regret feel forced.... Here, though, you believe the sweetness, because Hess and his cast sell it with poker faces."[27] Richard Brody of The New Yorker also gave praise to the film, writing that "Yes, the comedy is funny—even when it’s not laugh-out-loud funny, it’s sparklingly inventive and charmingly loopy—but, above all, it has the religious intensity and spiritual resonance that marks all of Hess’s other films, and it extends his world of ideas into wild new realms, extends his vision into darker corners of existence than he had formerly contemplated." He also observed the filmmaking of Hess as "suggest[ing] a kinship with the transcendental cinema of Robert Bresson and Carl Theodor Dreyer.... his images belong to a similar realm of astonishment, even if his are frankly comedic where theirs are irreconcilably tragic."[28]
References
- Brody, Richard (29 September 2016). "Jared Hess's Spiritual Gross-Out Comedy, in "Masterminds"". The New Yorker. Condé Nast. Retrieved 4 October 2016.
External links
Categories:
- 2016 films
- English-language films
- 2010s criminal comedy films
- American criminal comedy films
- American films
- American heist films
- Comedy films based on actual events
- Crime films based on actual events
- Films based on actual events
- Films directed by Jared Hess
- Films set in North Carolina
- Films set in 1997
- Films set in the 1990s
- Films shot in North Carolina
- Relativity Media films
- Films produced by Lorne Michaels
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1997 Loomis Fargo Robbery in North Carolina.
October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"David Ghantt" redirects here. For the New York State assemblyman, see David Gantt.
Not to be confused with the 1997 Loomis Fargo Robbery in Florida.
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| October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery | |
|---|---|
| Date | October 4, 1997 |
| Location | Maiden, North Carolina |
| Robbery incident summary | |
| Bank name | Loomis, Fargo & Co. |
| Robbed | $17.3 million |
| Recovered | 88% of the stolen money |
This robbery was the second-largest cash robbery on U.S. soil at the time, as only seven months earlier in Jacksonville, Florida, on March 29, 1997, Phillip Noel Johnson had taken $18.8 million from the Loomis Fargo armored vehicle he was driving.[2]
Contents
Company
Although the history of the predecessor Wells Fargo & Company dates back to 1852, Loomis Fargo & Company was a recent creation, established in 1997 by the consolidation of Wells Fargo Armored Service and Loomis Armored Inc.; the resulting corporation employed 8,500 people and provided armored transportation, cash handling services, and automatic teller machine maintenance.[3][4] Its Charlotte office would be the victim of Ghantt and his confederates later that year.Planning
Ghantt had struck up a relationship with fellow Loomis Fargo employee Kelly Campbell; they continued to maintain contact even after Campbell left the company. In August 1997, Campbell informed Ghantt of an old high school friend of hers, Steve Chambers, who could assist Ghantt in executing a massive cash robbery of the Loomis Fargo vault in one night. Chambers had broached the possibility of a robbery to Campbell earlier in the summer.The plan was for Ghantt to commit the actual robbery and then quickly leave the country for Mexico – but to leave the bulk of the cash with Chambers. Chambers would then occasionally wire Ghantt money and see to his basic financial needs; when "the heat was off," Ghantt was to re-enter the U.S. and the money would be split up among all of the co-conspirators.
Heist
With the plan in place, Ghantt sent home early a newly hired employee he had been assigned to train (reportedly, at 6 p.m.), and then proceeded to load a little more than $17.3 million in cash (approximately $11 million of which was in $20 bills) into the back of a company van.Outside of the building, Ghantt met up with Campbell, Chambers, and others who were involved in the plot, and drove off to a printing business called Reynolds & Reynolds in northwest Charlotte. From there, the money was moved from the armored car to private vehicles. Then, keeping with the plan, Ghantt took $50,000 (the maximum that could by law be taken across the border without further authorization) with him and left for Mexico, winding up at the popular Yucatan Peninsula resort-island of Cozumel.
FBI investigation
Ghantt as the Prime Suspect
Loomis Fargo employees could not open the vault the next morning, and called the police. The police almost immediately called the FBI, since 95% of the money handled at the facility was owned by banks. This technically made it a bank robbery — a federal offense.Investigators considered Ghantt to be the prime suspect almost from the beginning. He was the only employee unaccounted for the next morning, and videotapes recovered at the Loomis Fargo Charlotte office showed Ghantt removing "cubes of cash" and loading it into a Loomis Fargo armored van for over an hour.
Two days later, when the FBI found the Loomis Fargo armored van, they discovered almost $3.3 million in cash left in the back of the van; it was later discovered that the thieves had miscalculated the sheer bulk of the small denomination currency, and that they simply left the cash that they could not take with them in the back of the van. Investigators also found Ghantt's pickup truck, abandoned at the warehouse. Inside the truck, they found Ghantt's ring and surmised this was a sign of Ghantt's intention to end his relationship with his wife.
Although the FBI investigation was able to quickly connect Ghantt to Campbell, connecting Ghantt to Chambers was a more difficult task.[1] Tips had led the FBI to begin monitoring Chambers' (and his wife's) activities, but it was not until the FBI recorded a phone call from Ghantt in Mexico that the final connection was made. By then, the FBI had become greatly concerned for Ghantt's personal safety; they had learned that Chambers had plotted to have Ghantt killed in a murder for hire scheme using a "hit man" named Michael McKinney.
The FBI investigation was aided by the gang members' extravagant spending. They had initially agreed to control their spending for a year or two, in the belief that the government would vigorously track the spending habits of any and all suspects for at least a year before relenting. However, Chambers had no intention of following those rules, believing the FBI would never connect him to Ghantt. He and his wife, Michelle, moved from their mobile home in Lincoln County to a luxury house in the wealthy Cramer Mountain section of Cramerton. They kept several furnishings from the previous owners, including a painting of Elvis Presley on black velvet. They also bought a BMW Z3 with cash and made several large purchases, including a $600 cigar store Indian. Campbell used part of her share of the money to buy a Toyota Sienna minivan in two cash installments.
An additional tip reached the FBI when Michelle Chambers made a large deposit at a bank. She had previously been making frequent small deposits to avert suspicion. But after one visit, she asked a teller "How much can I deposit before you have to report it to the feds?" followed by "Don't worry, it is not drug money," the bank filled out a suspicious activity report, which ultimately reached the FBI.
Ghantt's spending in Mexico was extravagant at first. He had stayed in a luxury hotel and paid for expensive food and activities such as scuba diving and parasailing. Ghantt reported to Chambers that his supply of money was running low, but Chambers sent Ghantt just $8,000. Ghantt, in order to conserve this money, curtailed his spending. He also took various measures to change his appearance, such as shaving, after a patron at a restaurant pointed out to him that he "looked like the man who robbed a bank of $20 million."
Arrests, trials, and convictions
After successfully tracing Ghantt's phone call, FBI agents and Mexican police arrested Ghantt on March 1, 1998, at Playa del Carmen, a resort near Cozumel. The next day, Steve and Michelle Chambers, Campbell, and four other gang members were arrested.[5] On March 12, a Charlotte grand jury indicted the eight people for bank larceny and money laundering; the latter offense was included because of how they spent the stolen money. Nine other relatives and friends of the gang were also charged with money laundering, as they had co-signed for safe deposit boxes used to store some of the money; prosecutors opted to charge them on the grounds that they should have known the money was obtained illegally. On similar grounds, four other people were ultimately also charged with money laundering.All but one of the defendants pleaded guilty. The defendants received sentences ranging from probation for several relatives to 11 years and three months in federal prison for Steve Chambers. The only defendant to not plead guilty, Chambers' attorney Jeff Guller, was found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to eight years in prison. By comparison, Ghantt was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. Michelle Chambers received a harsher sentence than Ghantt — seven years and eight months — because she had violated several bond conditions.
The defendants became the targets of many barbed jokes in Charlotte and across the country, in part because of their extravagant spending. For a time, it was nicknamed "the hillbilly heist" because nearly all of the major players in the case came from small towns around Charlotte.
It was later confirmed by the FBI that more than 88 percent of the stolen cash had been located or otherwise accounted for. More than 2 million dollars is still missing to this day.[1]
Chambers released from prison
Michelle Chambers finished serving her sentence in November 2006. In February 2009 the Associated Press reported that Chambers had chosen to describe herself as "changed".[6][7]Media portrayals
- The robbery was the subject of the book Heist!: The $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft (ISBN 0895872528) by Jeff Diamant (published September 2002). Diamant was a Charlotte Observer newspaper reporter working in their Gaston County bureau when the theft took place.[1]
- A comedy film based on the events, Masterminds, was filmed in 2014 and released on September 29, 2016. It was written by Emily Spivey, directed by Jared Hess, and stars Zach Galifianakis as Ghantt, Kristen Wiig as Campbell, Owen Wilson as Chambers, and Jason Sudeikis as McKinney.[8]
See also
References
- Katie Walsh (29 September 2016). "'Masterminds' turns real crime into goofy fun". Detroit Free Press. p. 2C.
External links
- Ghantt and other gang members arrested in March 1998
- Ghantt pleads guilty in September 1998
- Steven Chambers released from prison; announces he is a "retired criminal"
- Review of this case and the Book Heist! by Jeff Diamant
- http://collider.com/jared-jerusha-hess-napoleon-dynamite-austenland-interview/139655/
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