’12 12 12′ Review: Does Knowing the Getaway Ruin the Thrill?

Apple TV’s ‘12 12 12‘ lands today with two episodes, and its hook is stamped on every opening scene. A professional heist supposedly needs 12 months of planning, 12 hours to pull off, and 12 days before the thieves are either caught or gone for good. Creators Jim Keeble and Dudi Appleton hang the entire season on that rule.

The target is a Zurich bank sitting on nearly a billion dollars in cash belonging to the Russian mafia. Jamie Dornan plays Paul Galvin, a reformed robber dragged back into the game when his older brother Bobby, played by Jack Kesy, gets into debt with a French mobster who threatens Paul’s pregnant wife Severine. On the other side is Anthony Mackie as FBI agent Jack Strickland, who has relocated to Europe after a botched takedown in Newark cost him his partner.

Here is where the series gets clever and trips over its own cleverness. Rather than march forward, the show moves through all three timelines at once, so the first episode gives you month one of planning, hour one of the robbery and day one of the aftermath. Onscreen graphics keep it easy to follow, but I found the structure kept letting the air out of the suspense, since you always know the crew will make it out the door.

The people inside that machine are the weaker part of the package. Paul’s team includes his father in law who is a drilling expert, the bank’s disgraced head of security and a contortionist small enough to fit inside a safety deposit box, yet most of them barely get a scene to themselves. Even Kali Reis, playing the getaway engineer, is more of a gear than a person. The bickering between the Galvin brothers runs out of steam fast, and Dornan plays Paul so calmly that he sometimes sands off his own edges.

Mackie fares better because Jack at least has somewhere to go. He has to figure out whether his hunger for revenge is worth what it is costing him, and his slow bond with Swiss detective Lena, played by Sallie Harmsen, carries more warmth than anything the Galvins muster. Mackie plays him with a tired, low burning grimness that suits the material even if it never boils over.

Where the show earns its keep is in the spectacle. A car chase through the streets of Zurich, a thundering avalanche, a near miss involving a train and a snowbound cabin full of suspicious faces show where the budget went, and the whole thing looks fantastic. The twists are mostly the familiar kind, with a few that I saw coming, but the timeline shuffling does deliver some satisfying moments when one scene suddenly recasts another.

Eight episodes is a lot of runway for a single robbery, and the back half sags once the story starts filling in gaps we have already glimpsed. The finale then stacks up a conclusion or two more than it needs, and the landing gets messier than the confident takeoff deserved.

Still, I had a good time with it. ‘The 12 12 12’ is glossy, brisk and led by two stars who clearly enjoy sharing a frame, and it never stops being watchable even when it stops being surprising. It is a slick heist binge that wastes some of its own tension, and I give it 7 out of 10.

Does the three timeline gimmick make ’12 12 12′ sharper or spoil the suspense for you, and would you rate it higher or lower than I did in the comments?