Review: '12 12 12' Heist Series Stretches a Movie Across Eight Hours

Apple TV premieres the heist thriller "12 12 12" on Friday, November 13, with two episodes. Eight episodes will follow weekly through the finale on December 25. Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan lead the series as an FBI agent and the master thief he has chased for years.

Every episode opens with the same explanation of the title. Citing a fictitious law enforcement manual, "Principles of Crime, FBI Research Center, 4th Edition," Mackie's character explains: "A high asset robbery, professionally conceived, is 12 months in planning, 12 hours in execution. A bank robber who's not caught within 12 days is not caught at all." The screen then splits horizontally to show the 12 months of preparation, the 12 hours of execution, and the 12 days in which thief Paul Galvin (Dornan) tries to elude Mackie's obsessed FBI agent Jack Strickland.

What works in the format?

The heist genre suits temporal manipulation in theory. Cop-and-criminal games of wits usually involve twists revealed through flashbacks, and the genre's familiar pieces — team-assembly montages, mid-robbery hiccups, chest-thumping meetings between cop and con — are all present. According to the review, the show is not confusing. It is convoluted. The serpentine structure undermines an otherwise well-mounted chase rather than energizing it, and disrupting the natural arc of anticipation, suspense and anxiety every hour for eight hours, in service of extra twists, "simply isn't worth it." The reviewer notes the series is obviously a movie-length story stretched across eight hours.

Who are the characters?

Dornan's Paul has one distinguishing trait: brilliant planning. He maps every contingency before a heist. He has left crime for family life, working on fishing boats off the French coast, living with his wife Severine (Agathe Rousselle) above a bar, close to his Marxist father-in-law Serge (José Garcia), with a child on the way. His brother Bobby (Jack Kesy) falls into debt with the wrong people, forcing Paul into one last job. Bobby's demand is blunt: "Paul, you're the fucking plan guy, so plan me a plan."

Mackie's Jack has nursed a secret grudge against Paul for years. The series offers placeholder motivations — revenge, "respect," the desire to win — before revealing what actually drives him to relocate to Zurich and wait for Paul to steal something. Mackie reunites here with his "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" director Kari Skogland. Co-creators Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble keep Jack as antagonist and Paul as protagonist, which preserves the viewer's rooting interests even as momentum ebbs with every flash-forward, flash-back and flash-sideways.

What's the verdict?

The reviewer offers one sidebar plea: Dornan needs more weird roles, citing his turn in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar" as proof of his range. Here, the review says, Dornan plays "the softest, sweetest guy on the FBI's most-wanted list." With slick locations and clever-enough problem-solving, the series should satisfy devoted heist fans — though it takes a circuitous route to scratching that itch, "and that's almost as aggravating as not scratching it at all." Whether viewers stay for the full 12 days will depend on their tolerance for a chase that keeps resetting its own clock.