12 12 12 Review

12 12 12 ReviewThe biggest crime of Apple TV’s heist series is its lame gimmick.This is a spoiler-free review of the first two episodes of 12 12 12, streaming on Apple TV now.Apple TV’s 12 12 12 operates under these invented cardinal rules of a professional heist: It takes 12 months to plan, 12 hours to execute, and if the cops don’t catch the perpetrators in 12 days, they never will. (Why this didn’t premiere on December 12, I’ll never understand.) The series rests its entire weight on this premise, hopping between the three phases of a heist organized by Jamie Dornan’s Paul Galvin, a retired thief pulled back in for one last job, and the FBI agent relentlessly on his trail, Anthony Mackie’s Jack Strickland. The question is, then, does 12 12 12’s gimmick work? Based on the first two episodes, “I’m robbing the house on Christmas Eve while the family’s at mass” and “I Want My Halo Back,” the answer seems to be: not really. 12 12 12 starts with eyebrow-raising intrigue, as a crumpled, naked man slithers out of a lockbox inside a fancy-looking bank vault and starts cracking open safes. But the cutaway from this scene — right into the 12 12 12 explanation — is only the first instance of the main problem with the show thus far: switching over to a new window of time kills any of the momentum the previous scenes had going for them. 12 12 12 also approaches each of its nonlinear storylines with the same level of urgency. Hour 1 of Paul’s heist to steal the equivalent of one billion physical U.S. dollars — which, just how bulky is that in comparison, say, to the Breaking Bad storage unit stack? — from a Swiss bank moves with practically the same verve as Jack getting wise to what’s happened on the Day 1 hunt. It doesn’t help with differentiating either when both characters keep referencing “what happened in Newark” as the murky botched job from the past they won’t shut the hell up about nor actually explain beyond the obvious trauma they incurred from it.12 12 12’s first two episodes, written by Dudi Appleton and Jim Keebble, treat that concept as though it’s so complicated that the audience could only follow the plot by spoon-feeding us time and place, and the script doubles down on this. The plot itself is full of cliches so that when it posits an occasionally unique idea it, by comparison, feels nearly revelatory. Of course, it often squanders that goodwill just as quickly. Just when you think 12 12 12 is going somewhere, its timeline triptych appears and swipes over to a new time period, resetting the action and deflating any of the excitement the show had just built. The dialogue is full of insufferable back-and-forths that are either inane or could have come from nearly any primetime cable procedural that’s attempting a quippy Marvel-ized punch-up.Mackie and Dornan, two very competent actors, both make great efforts to do what they can with the trite material but to little avail. There’s only so much even accomplished actors can do with lines like “What if the only thing I’m good at is being a thief?” as Paul contemplates his girlfriend’s surprise pregnancy, or “You stole from me, Galvin. Now you’re gonna know how it feels,” as Jack promises to get revenge on Paul. For a show about pulling off the biggest bank heist in European history, it’s botched the job.VerdictApple TV’s new heist series 12 12 12 is predicated on a timeline-hopping gimmick that doesn’t click, at least in its first two episodes. Switching between each phase of a heist on a Swiss bank kills any momentum the previous timeline had going for it. Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan do their best with the cliché-ridden material, but they can’t save the show from itself.In This Article12 12 12 Review4IGN LogoReview scoringbadApple TV’s new heist series 12 12 12 is predicated on a timeline-hopping gimmick that only works as an elevator pitch. Leanne Butkovic