Now more than ever, it seems as though the general public sympathizes with those forced to commit criminal acts in order to provide for their families. With the current economic climate in the United States, people who would otherwise live their lives on the straight and narrow now seem more inclined to turn towards illegal activity in order to pay their bills. As a result, we as a society seem more likely to connect with characters who, despite being generally good people, find themselves in shady situations. Thus is the case with Jay Martin’s 7 Minutes, a typical “heist gone wrong” film that, for better or worse, focuses more on the events leading up to a robbery than the actual robbery itself.

After being laid off from his job, Sam (Luke Mitchell) grows desperate to make enough money to provide for his girlfriend Kate (Leven Rambin) and their unborn child. His brother Mike (Jason Ritter) suggests getting into the drug dealing business with him. Along with their friend Owen (Zane Holtz), the brothers begin peddling weed and ecstasy. But when a deal goes wrong, the trio is forced to recoup the lost money or face serious consequences at the hands of a drug kingpin. With no other choices in sight, they decide to rob their local bank, and as is generally the case with untrained criminals, things don’t go quite as planned.

As more and more characters enter into the situation, the film flashes back to the events that led to everyone becoming involved in the heist. While the bank robbery lasts only seven minutes (hence the title), the flashback sequences comprise a majority of the film’s running time. A bumbling police officer, a scumbag thief, and a shady businessman all end up inside the bank during the heist, resulting in Sam, Mike, and Owen losing complete control of the situation.

You’ve seen 7 Minutes before. It follows the same blueprint as a number of similar crime thrillers, but does so well enough to constitute a viewing for fans of such genre films. Stylistically, the film is like a strange mixture of Bad Turn Worse (another Starz release) and the opening and closing sequences of Pulp Fiction. Martin utilizes a delightfully southern, small town vibe throughout the film, and the idea that everybody knows everybody comes into play on more than one occasion.

Performances are solid across the board, with Leven Rambin stealing the show every time she appears onscreen. Mitchell, Ritter, and Holtz play off each other very well as the “looks, brains, and muscle,” respectively. Joel Murray and the legendary Kris Kristofferson appear in minor roles, though they are both relatively underused. As an ensemble, though, the characters genuinely feel like members of a small community with some serious issues.

The only glaring issue with 7 Minutes is the considerable amount of fluff in the flashback sequences. In the midst of a high-action scene, nothing grinds down on an audience’s attention span like cutting to a low-energy, dialogue heavy flashback. Martin’s reasoning for this is admirable. He clearly wants viewers to connect with the characters as much as possible, but the pacing just isn’t quite there because of the inconvenient timing of the flashbacks. The time jumps only answer questions no one would bother asking, making their presence feel irrelevant.

It definitely doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to heist thrillers, but 7 Minutes is a fun romp for film fans who just can’t get enough of watching bumbling criminals struggle to successfully commit a crime. Experienced filmgoers will be able to predict this one from a mile away, and sure, quite a few movies with a similar plot have come along in recent memory, but 7 Minutes manages to be enjoyable despite its issues. If you think you’ll have a good time with this one, you’re probably going to have a good time.

When A-listers assemble for a film that hardly seems viable on paper let alone delivering anything of worth on-screen, one has to wonder what the inside joke is. The paycheck couldn’t have been that enticing for an indie drama-comedy and with a first time director, Anna Mastro, and a cloying script adapted from a first-time short by Paul Shoulberg, there was certainly no real muscle enticing the likes of William H. Macy, Virginia Madsen, and sleeper-celebs Neve Campbell and Peter Facinelli. So while the actual logistics around a production of this sort elude me, the evidence of Walter’s thinly-lined plot, actively unfunny premise, and reaching sentimentality are abundant.

Walter is the tale of Walter (spoiler alert), an uptight young man (Andrew J. West) who lives an organized and calculated life as indicated by the three alarms he uses to wake up in the morning, his eyes popping open before they even begin to chime. His robot—I mean mother (Virginia Madsen)—leaves his freshly pressed shirt for him next to his door every morning and cooks him eggs for every meal, constantly bemoaning the dangers of starvation. As for his father, well, Walter is the son of God. Not THE son of God, that beardy one, just another son of God. And as such, Walter has been gifted with the ability to judge. (An ability I’d heretofore thought everyone possessed.) Walter’s judgements are simple: “heaven” or “hell.”

To supply him with a steady stream of people to judge, Walter works in the local multiplex tearing tickets. Joined by douche-bag Vince (Milo Ventimiglia), who pokes fun of Walter’s slightly Asperger-ish ways, and the beautiful—and clearly heaven-bound—Kendall (Leven Rambin) who works in concessions. Jim Gaffigan is sorely underutilized as their always-annoyed manager Corey. Not only does Walter busy himself tearing tickets and muttering eternal condemnation on his unsuspecting patrons, but he’s also the shy-movie-lover type, spending his breaks inside the theaters watching whatever is on. This particular trait leads to many a movie-reel style flashback wherein we learn Walter’s father (Peter Facinelli) died when he was young. A sad, broken, father-less introvert who lives a controlled life to the point of deciding the after-life fate of every stranger he sees sounds like the most open and close psych case out there.

And indeed, Walter does eventually find himself a therapist (William H. Macy) when his organized life is put into tail-spin by the appearance of someone new. Greg the Ghost (Justin Kirk). Not quite as friendly as Casper, but at least not decomposing, and stuck in a sort of limbo awaiting judgement for the past ten years. How he knows to track down Walter the Judger we don’t know, but Walter is none too pleased to be asked to pass judgement on someone already dead. Apparently his gift only works on the living. Greg won’t take no for an answer and as he drags Walter around showing him the life he left behind, strange connections to Walter’s own life start to become transparent.

From there the film quickly dissolves into a goopy mess, abandoning its comedic sensibilities altogether and attempting to insert heightened emotion with some long-winded dramatically-tense scenes between Walter and his mother, and Walter and his therapist. Unfortunately Walter is entirely too stiff to care much for by this point and his revelations align in cookie cutter patterns that are entirely too convenient. Everyone responds appropriately, right down to dream-girl-Kendall being open to all-new-Walter in that way that only scripted dream-girls can be.

Walter wishes it were quirky, a word I’ve come to despise and lesser indies seem to aspire to. But if “weird” is what Walter is going for, it doesn’t even reach that. Mostly it’s a strange concept, that actually falls into totally plausible categories and develops exactly the way you’d think. It’s unbalanced in its intent, failing to push hard enough with its comedy and pushing too hard with its drama. As a simple look into the world of a young man on the cusp—I’m not joking, they even use the same “Hero” song we’ve all grown to associate with Boyhood during one scene—it’s simply not moving, nor enlightening. If they’d thrown God into the mix, or even provided any sort of explanation for Walter’s gift and how it works, than the actual “weirdness” of the film might have been interesting, but alas these areas go entirely undeveloped.

Macy and Madsen are always on their game, but this game is about as fun to watch as solitaire. West (his most recent memorable role being leader of a cannibalistic tribe on The Walking Dead) is straight with his awkward and emotionally stunted character to the point of detachment, but I won’t place the blame entirely on his shoulders. It’s often the case when a short film is translated to feature-length that the filler ends up being more of what already existed, which only makes for too much of what was previously just enough. Walter is a stretched out short with some A-list talent but not enough sense to hold it afloat. Perhaps its time for indie comedies to stop aspiring to “quirky” and start aspiring to well-developed and less gimmicky.

Walter gets a limited theatrical release Friday, March 13.