The Heist Before Christmas review: Sky Max festive drama is a bleak reminder of the year we want to forget

Sky comedy drama The Heist Before Christmas is another of those alternative festive movies, where instead of revelling in the joy of the period, we are instead reminded of how bleak the world around us has become.

More a cost of living drama than a Christmas film, it feels like It’s A Wonderful Life, if you chopped off the last 10 minutes of joyous community redemption.

The film follows 12 year old Mikey Collins (Bamber Todd) a child from a poor single parent household who is embittered with Christmas because he knows that his mother, who works every hour she can at a local store, can’t afford to buy him nice presents, or his brother a bike.

When he finds a bank robber dressed as Santa (Nesbit) in the woods, and another man who claims to be the real St. Nick (Spall), he spots an opportunity to make some fast money and get his brother the bike he has his heart set on.

Meanwhile his mother, Patricia (a standout performance by Laura Donnelly) is stretching her paltry pay to the limit to make ends meet, buying a bone from the butchers ‘for the dog’ to make a broth for her kids’ dinner, and dealing with a boss on a power trip.

Todd does a fine job as the young Christmas-hater, playing the frustrated child who blames his mother for the family’s poverty, whilst also on some deeper level understanding that the world is an unjust place.

Spall is wasted in the role of the other Santa, not given as many lines as you would hope, and overshadowed by Nesbit’s bank robber. One Santa is more than enough and the film would have felt cleaner and pacier without the guff about mixing up which Claus is which.

The Heist Before Christmas is bleak to the bone, and I suppose that’s the point, except that the film also attempts to establish itself as a light-hearted comedy. The Santa-costumed bank robber makes for a fun crime caper, but that film is buried in this crushing tale of family poverty at Christmastime.

In the end we are treated to the ‘true meaning of Christmas’ schmaltz, but the basic facts remain unchanged. There’s no magical answer to the poverty this family has been pushed into by a cost of living crisis and an uncaring government, and nor should there be, but it’s not exactly light Christmas viewing. This is a film best avoided by those who want to forget the world's troubles for just one day this year.

The Heist Before Christmas airs on Sky Max at 8pm on Christmas Eve.