How To Rob A Bank Pays Tribute To A Bruce Willis Movie With A Clever Easter Egg

There's something of a paradox when it comes to making legitimately good crime action movies. On the one hand, most filmmakers want the action to be as accurate and based in reality as possible, whether it be robbing a bank, taking down a security truck, or whatnot. On the other hand, they don't necessarily wish to inspire criminals who would copycat a crime they happened to see in a movie, especially as that's an instance where all publicity doesn't necessarily equal good publicity. (Remember the brouhaha over a crime allegedly inspired by 1995's "Money Train," a case which only just reached a resolution a few years ago?)

The irony of the new crime action film "How to Rob a Bank" is that it intentionally wishes to exist on the edge separating these two sides. The film, written by Mark Bianculli and directed by David Leitch, concerns a group of friends who, upon becoming radicalized by the various injustices of the current U.S. wealth gap, decide to become bank robbers. Their gimmick is hiding their crimes in plain sight, filming themselves in the act and detailing exactly how they did it for their YouTube channel (all while hiding their identities, naturally). 

Thus, Leitch and Bianculli have to include a bunch of real-world tactics and hardware without going too far. To help accomplish this, they have their bandits (who've dubbed themselves the Wolf Pack) borrow a technique from the sequel to the bonafide action classic that is "Die Hard," i.e. 1990's "Die Hard 2." And while the characters never mention the movie on-screen, the inclusion of a trick used by that film's villains works as both an Easter egg homage to that movie as well as a bit of real-world verisimilitude, as this particular tactic does sound like it could actually work.

In "Die Hard 2," the terrorists holding Washington Dulles International Airport hostage around Christmas are former U.S. Army soldiers who've been corrupted by a military drug lord. After Bruce Willis' John McClane their plans while getting a quip or two in, the airport brass call in a military counter-terrorism unit. Then, during the subsequent firefights between the counter-terrorism unit and the terrorists, each group makes a point of switching to clips for their machine guns labeled with blue instead of red stripes. Eventually, McClane discovers this code means blue for blank rounds and red for live rounds, revealing that both units are working together.

While the terrorists in "Die Hard 2" have devised a fairly elaborate scheme, the blank-vs-live rounds element seems fairly simple and self-explanatory. In other words, it has an authenticity about it, which is why its use in "How to Rob a Bank" feels smooth rather than belabored. The Wolf Pack want to make their robberies feel threatening to the authorities they encounter and only elect to use live rounds to save their own skins. As such, adopting the blue and red labeled gun clips makes for an easy to understand visual code, so much so that the characters in the film barely have to explain it to the audience. 

For those who know "Die Hard 2," this is a cute Easter egg calling back to that film's intuitive code system. Yet, for those who don't know, the element still completely works, and its realism adds to the movie's credibility. Who knows if anyone has used it (or will) in real life, but it helps "How to Rob a Bank" exist on that edge.

"How to Rob a Bank" is in theaters now.