I’d be down for a heist movie that’s closer to MacGuyver plus social engineering. Cold open on a guy walking right in the back door with people on smoke break, photographing a badge whilst chatting with bored security guards, getting a password by lifting someone’s keyboard, copying sensitive files in a wildly overdramatic series of close-ups… and instantly being rumbled because some IT guy sat up and went “Who the fuck is running PowerShell in accounting?”
Red Team, in theaters Christmas 2027.
The cliche approach to developing an actual plot would be to have some actual bastard infiltrate the infiltrators. It lets him break into places under the facade of… breaking into places. And he did manage to falsify his reputation to professional forensic bullshitters, and roll with them on several jobs, so he’s competent. He just plans to assassinate the CEO or something. This turns the third-act set piece into the good guys figuring this out in real-time, and trying to stop him, amid what was supposed to be their big exfiltration job. Step one: they call the fucking police. Who will arrive, y’know, eventually. Step two, they notify the security staff they’ve been lying to and hiding from, which at this time of night amounts to the front desk guy and one old fart armed with a sturdy flashlight. Step three, embrace that it’s a stupid movie, and they’ll have to out-hackerman this guy. “It’s up to us!” “He probably has a gun.” “… how much do we like this CEO, anyway?”
The better approach to developing an actual plot would be to have someone stiff them on a job. If the contract wasn’t satisfied, as some dickhead claims… it’s still open. They have carte blanch to keep embarrassing this corporation, plus some ongoing temptation to just keep whatever they take. Maximum chaos otherwise. The villainous middle manager whose promotion depends on fucking them over finds his car forklifted onto a warehouse shelf, with a pile of sensitive documents inside. They use the spray-can trick to walk past one-way doors, just to edit some important presentation so the company name is misspelled. One guy redirected an entire palette of laptops to his driveway, and if these chucklefucks can’t even figure out where they went, his house might become legendary at Halloween.
The cold open is basically exactly what you say, watching a guy just casually walk into an office building, shim a door with a piece of plastic packaging found in a trash can, show the guy taking a password from under a keyboard and stealing a cookie from a desk, then have him get caught…and present his letter of authorization, smash cut to a debriefing scene where this character is delivering a powerpoint to some executives about how their firewall was pretty good but the server room doors are easy to shim and that their password discipline in the office could be better, but the guards were on point and did a good job catching an intruder.
That’s the intro sequence, the actual story is some BIG company, like a defense contractor or something, hires them, and then it’s a heist movie, they hire some of their buddies who specialize in things, they prepare, we have a scene where the guy who does the gadgets shows off some new gear, like a badge reader built into a messenger bag, just sit on a bench next to the sidewalk and it’ll read the RFID badges of everyone walking down the sidewalk etc. then they start doing surveillance and some funny things happen, culminating in the big scene where one guy runs interference pretending to be a hoodlum in the parking lot distracting the guards while the team wrecks shop inside.
Consider, then: meta meta. The movie uses the actual name and likeness of Raytheon, because some delightful prick put very particular clauses into his contract, and assured them it’d be for conference talks and Youtube videos. Mostly.
I’d be down for a heist movie that’s closer to MacGuyver plus social engineering. Cold open on a guy walking right in the back door with people on smoke break, photographing a badge whilst chatting with bored security guards, getting a password by lifting someone’s keyboard, copying sensitive files in a wildly overdramatic series of close-ups… and instantly being rumbled because some IT guy sat up and went “Who the fuck is running PowerShell in accounting?”
Red Team, in theaters Christmas 2027.
The cliche approach to developing an actual plot would be to have some actual bastard infiltrate the infiltrators. It lets him break into places under the facade of… breaking into places. And he did manage to falsify his reputation to professional forensic bullshitters, and roll with them on several jobs, so he’s competent. He just plans to assassinate the CEO or something. This turns the third-act set piece into the good guys figuring this out in real-time, and trying to stop him, amid what was supposed to be their big exfiltration job. Step one: they call the fucking police. Who will arrive, y’know, eventually. Step two, they notify the security staff they’ve been lying to and hiding from, which at this time of night amounts to the front desk guy and one old fart armed with a sturdy flashlight. Step three, embrace that it’s a stupid movie, and they’ll have to out-hackerman this guy. “It’s up to us!” “He probably has a gun.” “… how much do we like this CEO, anyway?”
The better approach to developing an actual plot would be to have someone stiff them on a job. If the contract wasn’t satisfied, as some dickhead claims… it’s still open. They have carte blanch to keep embarrassing this corporation, plus some ongoing temptation to just keep whatever they take. Maximum chaos otherwise. The villainous middle manager whose promotion depends on fucking them over finds his car forklifted onto a warehouse shelf, with a pile of sensitive documents inside. They use the spray-can trick to walk past one-way doors, just to edit some important presentation so the company name is misspelled. One guy redirected an entire palette of laptops to his driveway, and if these chucklefucks can’t even figure out where they went, his house might become legendary at Halloween.
Nah play it perfectly straight.
The cold open is basically exactly what you say, watching a guy just casually walk into an office building, shim a door with a piece of plastic packaging found in a trash can, show the guy taking a password from under a keyboard and stealing a cookie from a desk, then have him get caught…and present his letter of authorization, smash cut to a debriefing scene where this character is delivering a powerpoint to some executives about how their firewall was pretty good but the server room doors are easy to shim and that their password discipline in the office could be better, but the guards were on point and did a good job catching an intruder.
That’s the intro sequence, the actual story is some BIG company, like a defense contractor or something, hires them, and then it’s a heist movie, they hire some of their buddies who specialize in things, they prepare, we have a scene where the guy who does the gadgets shows off some new gear, like a badge reader built into a messenger bag, just sit on a bench next to the sidewalk and it’ll read the RFID badges of everyone walking down the sidewalk etc. then they start doing surveillance and some funny things happen, culminating in the big scene where one guy runs interference pretending to be a hoodlum in the parking lot distracting the guards while the team wrecks shop inside.
Consider, then: meta meta. The movie uses the actual name and likeness of Raytheon, because some delightful prick put very particular clauses into his contract, and assured them it’d be for conference talks and Youtube videos. Mostly.