“No one’s born bad.”
“Bandit,” opening with these words, wants you to know early that in the debate between nature and nurture, the film chooses the latter. A career criminal is more than the sum of his crimes, “Bandit” hammers again and again, even if said man goes to an American prison for wire fraud, escapes said prison, flees to Canada and then proceeds to commit dozens of bank heists over a three-year period, all while lying to those closest to him and generally reveling in the adrenaline of a crime well executed.
You can see how the words don’t quite match the deeds, a disparity that plagues “Bandit” throughout its 120-minute runtime. A perfect example of that? The film’s source material. “Bandit,” directed by Allan Ungar (best known for the Nathan Fillion-led live-action “Uncharted” fan film), works from a screenplay by Kraig Wenman that’s based on Robert Knuckle’s novel “The Flying Bandit,” which recounts how American Gilbert Galvan Jr. used charm, wit and costumes galore to rob 59 Canadian banks and jewelry stores in the mid- to late 1980s before being caught.
