Flawed but Fun: Freddie Highmore, Astrid Berges-Frisbey Crack The Vault in Jaume Balagueró's Caper

Freddie Highmore (The Good Doctor) plays Thom, a brilliant engineering student on the verge of graduation and already turning down job offers from mulitple oil companies after a patent of his saved them millions in oil spill cleanup. But when he's approached by Walter (Liam Cunningham, Game of Thrones), a salvage ship captain who has had his most recent salvage taken from him by the Spanish government, he gets drawn into an engineering puzzle that he can't ignore.

The treasure Walter has recovered has been placed in a special location within the Bank of Spain called, appropriately enough, "The Vault." The problem is that nobody knows what The Vault is, only that it's supposed to be an impenetrable feat of engineering created decades in the past. So it's not just solving the problem, but first defining the problem. And there's a time limit pressing down on the team, because within the recovered treasure is the real item of value -- and Walter needs to get it back before the Spanish government figures out what it actually has on its hands: the key to an even bigger treasure, which Walter was commissioned to recover by the British government.

Also part of the team is Lorraine (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), who serves as a spy within the bank to perform the necessary social engineering and reconnaisance. But even after discovering what the vault is and how to get to it, the thieves have to work fast, because the chief of bank security, Simon (Luis Tosar) is already on to them and watching for any sign of them. But the thieves have one thing working in their favor that Simon can do nothing about: the World Cup championship games.

Jaume Balagueró directs a film that's kind of fun to watch in the vein of National Treasure. Upon analysis, however, I felt there were more direct and simple ways to get around the built in safeguards that made "The Vault" so theft-proof. However, to discuss them here would be to spoil what The Vault is -- and that's something you'll want to discover for yourself.