Spanish industry is popular for its thriller films that completely baffles you. Shows like Money Heist and The Minions of Midas are mindblowing Television Series coming from the country. The 2021 film, The Vault (titled Way Down in some regions) is a Heist film too, with a similar kind of set-up as the Money Heist, and popular film Oceans 11. But does it matches the standard of its predecessor? Umm, not entirely.
Directed by Jaume Balagueró, The Vault (film) revolves around a mission to steal a treasure from the world’s safest vault inside the Bank of Spain. Walter Moreland, a Marine archaeologist extracts a treasure consisting of gold coins and other valuable from a drowned ship. However, the Spanish government seizes the extraction and claims it as its own as it was found on the water body, which comes under their jurisdiction. Walter tries to argue but he is helpless. The government locks up the treasure inside a vault in the most secure location of their country, the Bank of Spain.
To get back his hard-earned treasure, he creates a team to break into the vault. But it’s isn’t any normal safe. It runs on a mechanism that gets filled with water when someone enters it and doesn’t open until the person inside has completely drowned or died. To break the mechanism, Walter approaches a genius engineering graduate, Thom Laybrick.
With the help of Thom, Walter and his team are able to break into the vault and fulfill the mission, but the journey isn’t so easy as stated. There are many twists and turns that keep you hooked.
The Vault (Way Down) Ending Explained
As depicted through the last part of the story, Walter wasn’t behind the gold in the lost treasure but he was interested in three coins packed inside a box. These coins reveal the location of Francis Drake’s fortune buried somewhere in the world. Walter and his team are quite surprised to find the spot. The fortune is buried beneath the Bank of London, which will be their next target. A sequel to the film will follow on to the next heist.
The Vault (film) lacks the “wow” element that completely astonishes you. It portrays some cliche tricks, like revealing the facts late, a hidden rat in the team, and holding back the information. However, any of these choices aren’t anything peculiar and we have seen a lot of them in heist films like Mission Impossible, Ocean Eleven, and Money Heist. The characters of the films aren’t fleshed out and just look like puppets coded to complete the mission. They don’t have any chemistry and equation with each other, and thus, not many layers of the story have been explored. The Vault (film) doesn’t look like a proper cinema but rather a commercial flick just to entertain the audience. In short, there is no thought or takeaway. It is just playing randomly.
The writers have incorporated a scene where the 2010 Football World Cup final match is shown, to help the characters and use it as a distraction in their heist. Though, this a unique addition to the entire film, the instrument fails to create an emotional impact. I felt it, way too convenient. If anyone wishes to understand to learn the use of distractions in the script, the Money Heist incorporates the best of them. It is literally, a work of genius in that perspective.
Looking at the larger picture, The Vault (Way Down) fails to create an impact. The things it offers are stale and not creative. All I remember is a dialogue in which Thom makes a reference to Ocean Eleven, other than that, it’s just something not worth remembering.
The Vault (Way Down) is a 2021 film directed by Jaume Balagueró.
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