So many adaptations have been done of Mark Twain’s seminal novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and its sequels that Tom and his pal Huckleberry Finn have long since become two of American literature’s most famous characters of all time. In this way, Tom and Huck could be called the US equivalent of Sherlock Holmes — even more than 100 years later, there continue to be countless stage and screen adaptations, as playwrights and filmmakers keep trying to offer a fresh take on these classic characters and their familiar story. Band of Robbers, the latest film attempting to find something new to explore in Twain’s characters, comes from writer-director brothers Aaron and Adam Nee (The Last Romantic) — and on the spectrum of Twain adaptations, it ultimately falls much closer in quality to the 1995 Disney flop Tom and Huck, starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Brad Renfro, than to the 1985 Tony-winning Broadway musical Big River.
Set in the present-day South, Band of Robbers picks up years after the events of Twain’s novel, with Tom and Huck now adults. Tom (Adam Nee) is a police officer, while Huck (Kyle Gallner, Veronica Mars) has just been released from prison. Before Huck can even begin to adjust to real life again, however, Tom hears a rumour about the location of the treasure the two sought as children and convinces Huck to help him steal it from a local pawn shop — unless their long-time nemesis Injun Joe (Stephen Lang, Avatar) gets to it first. And so the two embark on their caper, encountering one complication after another, as they try both to avoid getting caught and to evade Injun Joe, who is leaving a pile of dead bodies in his wake.
The plot here is about as unimaginative as it gets, and things only get worse as the filmmakers continually struggle to decide which tone they’re after — Band of Robbers is alternately a tense thriller, a melancholic drama, and a slapstick comedy. It’s a film that jolts from a tension-filled scene where characters hide from a murderer inside a coffin to a scene where a character thought to be dead suddenly wakes up, causing an extended over-the-top everyone-screams-in-shock sequence straight out of a Wayans spoof, to a wink-wink post-modern exchange about whether or not it’s racist that Injun Joe calls himself Injun Joe. The Brothers Nee edited the film themselves in addition to writing and directing it, and perhaps they needed an outside perspective to keep them in line, since they clearly have no idea what kind of film this is supposed to be.
Gallner is quite strong as a young man with no family and no prospects who yearns to make something meaningful of his life and find the stability he’s never had. There is a current of sadness running through his performance, as Huck grapples with his bleak prospects and the tragedy of his circumstances, and the film does a decent job of confronting the sheer injustice Huck faces. Lang, however, is best in show — his Joe is absolutely terrifying, despite it being the slowest and quietest performance in the film. Lang finds a way to convey pure evil through polite menace.
The rest of the supporting cast is uniformly forgettable, since none of the actors in the ensemble are given anything interesting to play. Melissa Benoist (CBS’s Supergirl) is dorky but bland as Tom’s aw-shucks newbie partner in the police force, while “the old gang” of boys who opt in on the treasure-snatching caper are there more for slapstick purposes rather than to be interesting, well-written characters. Matthew Gray Gubler (CBS’s Criminal Minds) fares best among the old gang; Hannibal Buress and Johnny Pemberton, as amusing as they are, merely play the same persona they’re known for playing on various TV shows.
Then there’s Tom Sawyer. Tom needs to be a bad influence who constantly convinces Huck to make poor decisions, and Adam Nee is undeniably committed to his portrayal of the famous troublemaker. His Tom, though, is less of a lovable scamp than he is an awful person unable to learn from his mistakes. Tom and Huck are grown men now, and Tom’s bad behaviour and terrible choices are no longer charming. He’s just a pathetic man-child with a respectable job who nevertheless can’t stop being his own worst enemy. Huck has grown; Huck has been through the prison system and doesn’t wish to return. When confronted with Tom’s latest scheme, Huck just sighs defeatedly knowing that he won’t be able to resist being drawn back into his old friend’s hijinks. But Gallner plays Huck as someone grown weary of Tom Sawyer and ready to move on. Which is precisely how the audience feels by the time Band of Robbers rolls its end credits.
