The 2024 independent film Midas certainly has the feel of a Robin Hood story where the aim is to steal from the wealthy and give to the less fortunate. Sure the feeling of being an outlaw or in need of protesting is still a thing today, but the scenery and distribution of riches are quite different. Today, we don’t fix our economic issues by stealing comedically large sacks of money as if we were a medieval English folk character, nor are we the bank robbers of the 90s from Set it Off or Heat. The phrase from The Cabaret still holds true when they say Money makes the world go round, except now it is mostly located on computer servers in the form of electronics.
Writing and directing Midas, Tj Noel-Sullivan has crafted a modern-day heist film that he’s hoped to aspire to after winning multiple awards during his short career. Sullivan also acknowledges that today’s robs looking rob-hoods aren’t robbing gold from aristocrats, but are instead now targeting wealthy powerful businessmen controlling companies instead of countries.
Midas has the right approach where they want to make the weight a little less on the pockets of entire families helping. But the crux of the matter is that no one would want to lift such an exorbitant weight. The core elements of the movie are pretty engaging as well, rooting for people who would otherwise be deemed criminals feels a bit out there but the premise allows for it.
Ricky Pryce, a college dropout turned food delivery driver for a network of soul food restaurants in Hartford, Connecticut is played by Juquan Copeland’s best New York Emerging Talent in 2021. One of those small businesses is home to Ricky’s mothers’s home chef services Mia (Jo Ann Cleghorne of Vex). She is seen trying to market and sell her culinary inventions but, with the cancer sickness she is enduring things move rather slowly, which leaves Ricky looking out for another source of income.
Though he doesn’t intend to go, Ricky decides to accompany his friends Victor Rojas and Sunita Arora to a grand garden party organized by Midas Insurance Company. During the party, Sunita who is also known as Preet Kaur goes in search of a more elegant life and starkly contrasts her character portrayal of Tony since the character she plays in the movie is utterly classy which is quite the opposite of what she embodies. Ricky, who is effortlessly alluring is, predictably, effortlessly magical at the party. He soon comes across one Claire Brent, who is the daughter of Gregory Brent, the very Midas CEO he was nagging at. The Gregory Brent portrayal done by Bob Gallagher is like an icing on the cake. To further his attempts to impress the Gregory Brent character and blend in, Ricky lies about attending Harvard. However, his fortis events don’t stop. He’s offered a job by Midas Insurance Company which happens to be a sculpt behind his aggressive uncle “Tom.” The attention turned away from Sunita to Ricky as this was exactly what she was seeking at the party.
LESSON #2: If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them: Ricky now works for the same company that fired his mother and he begins to work for the insurance claims department. He does not care and starts granting every claim that he sees which makes Tom angry and results in a stern corporate reprimand about the proper approach to the denial side of the business. A plan begins to materialize as Ricky starts going through his mother’s archived Midas records, he needs some mailroom assistance from Sunita and a bit of computer work from Victor. All this planning goes on as Ricky still lies to Claire, and impresses Gregory with the new project.
As Midas develops, well-planned causal approaches, an unexpected climax, and gradually raising demands regarding the screenplay, all of them are present in TJ Noel-Sullivan’s dismantlement of an understated white collar criminal web. It’s funny how minor errors in this hero adventure also impact the karmic balance and the self-destruct instinct of the would-be thieves. Midas definitely does what it does, stays within comfort zones. while using percussion instruments added by Isabel Belen Buarco and Anoyd. This movie was never going to be Mission: Impossible in its action or Hell or High Water in its sentimentality Ocean’s 11 in its budget range. Ocean’s 11 is in the budget range or even something approachable.
What is important in any heist movie is that the target is of significance to the people who are. That is where Midsas gets it correct for an indie scale. About that, Midas assigns such worth by asking “How are you feeling?” There are two parts, a casual answer and a heavy one. The easier response is that of the usual preamble where people ask each other how they feel. The wrinkles come if a casual response like this is given, only as a smoke screen to hide their real feelings. On the other sense, it is quite the opposite, then the question about well having an emotional depth that is quite haunting when posed to people who are illness or caring for the long-term illnesses. Midas is rather nice guessing and searching for its scores of all of them.
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