This movie could have been told 2-3 different ways that would have made it a meaningful piece of art. I stuck with it because it seemed like the writer was really working hard to make it in to something. Unfortunately he chose a sensational and largely predictable ending that made it nothing other than a run of the mill crime story.

They had everything in place to make this great, including acting, story, scenery and deep themes. The real crime was to waste it all for a conventional direction.

However, I would recommend this movie. It captures the essence of Chicago for its first half like no other movie I have seen in quite some time.

It is one of those movies that weaves several stories together. The most interesting angle and the one I wish they had fully explored was an aldermanic race featuring a white Irish candidate whose father was handing him the office, running in a district gerrymandered into a significant African American population by a mayor seeking revenge on the father for a past insult. His opponent is an African American with flaws as well. That was the story to tell right there.

Another story is wives of thieves whose husbands die in a job and are left to pay for sins they didn't commit. That's another good story.

Instead we are stuck with some muddled girl power heist featuring Liam Neeson, who seems incapable of turning down a role in his old age.

Oh what could have been.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.