Based on the true story of staid Canadian bus driver turned charismatic bank robber Edwin Boyd, filmmaker Nathan Morlando's Citizen Gangster wants to be both an authentic period piece and a hip contemporary action thriller. The setting is the outskirts of postwar Toronto, where WWII vet, workaday bus driver, and wannabe actor Boyd (Scott Speedman) barely ekes out a living with his English wife. Frustrated with his lot, Boyd decides to rob a local bank using his wife's makeup to create a ghostly white-face disguise. Before long his effortless robberies become more and more like a vaudeville act (accompanied by a raucous contemporary blues-rock soundtrack), but he's finally caught and jailed, at which point a pall of grim reality begins to overtake the previously playful mood. Eventually, Boyd escapes with a posse of other bank robbers, and the ensuing bank jobs escalate into deadly criminal operations that he can no longer control. Although it's clear that Boyd is supposed to be considered some sort of folk hero, he comes across as just another desperate fugitive on the run from the inevitable reach of the law. An optional purchase. (M. Sandlin)
Citizen Gangster
MPI, 105 min., not rated, DVD: $24.98 Volume 27, Issue 6
Citizen Gangster
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