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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
10
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Apr 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
This Is a Robbery is expertly structured to build and keep momentum, teasing major elements of the story before bringing them home later. Despite its cinematic luster (The Irishman producer Jane Rosenthal is among the producers), this is a tight, four-episode series, not a four-hour movie. The interviews in This Is a Robbery are an embarrassment of riches.
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Apr 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
A dazzling mash-up of the usual elements that go into these increasingly popular docu-programs: archival news footage and crime scene photos; audio recordings from informants; grainy security cam footage; well-crafted graphics mapping out the timeline and the locales for various key events; interviews with a number of investigators, prosecutors, defense attorneys, eyewitnesses and journalists; and stylish re-creations of events from long ago. “This Is a Robbery” raises more questions than it answers, but those questions are deeply intriguing.
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ColliderApr 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
What makes This Is a Robbery so compelling, and unique in contrast to the slew of other true crime docuseries available, is that everything about this crime is weird. The show does a terrific job of using experts to relay the strangeness of the heist – from what was (and wasn’t) stolen to the decision to keep the security guards alive.
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Apr 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
With its atmospheric reenactments, lucid, witty editing, and entertaining interviewees (including Globe reporter Shelley Murphy, columnist Kevin Cullen, and retired Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Kurkjian), the film might not solve the three-decade old case, but does transform it into a frustrating and irresistible mystery.
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The Daily BeastApr 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
This is a Robbery has a propulsive momentum that doesn’t interfere with its comprehensive examination of its story’s numerous angles. Utilizing an array of graphical timelines and maps, photographs, and archival news and crime scene videos, it lucidly details the multiple threads that comprise its tale.
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Apr 6, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The cast expands outwards from its most intriguing hub, encompassing attorneys, museum higher-ups, those connected to suspects, and people with a great deal to say. ... In all, this makes for a fascinating portrait of an incident that lives on in the memory of a city that has both high culture and organized crime encoded in its DNA.
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IndieWireApr 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
One of the local reporters who’s been on the Gardner case beat since the beginning says that it’s been “30 years that these masterpieces have been missing. It needs a break.” “This is a Robbery” does a decent job at laying out what’s happened over those three decades — it also does a lot to prove that statement right.
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Apr 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
"This Is a Robbery" occasionally delivers on the promise of its engrossing introduction, but is largely held back by the creators' obvious desire to methodically introduce and dismiss various theories, as well as an unfortunate lack of visual interest (especially for a series centered on art).
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RogerEbert.comApr 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
As is, "This is a Robbery" alternates between superficially digging into major issues like the impact of the mob around the world (it skims through the IRA, for example, and its connection to the Boston mob in a matter of minutes) and repetitively repeating details of the crime itself. It’s interesting because the case and its many players are interesting, but it’s poorly made.
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