The Vault, also known as Way Down in some regions, is a Spanish action thriller film directed by Jaume Balagueró that was released in 2021. Freddie Highmore, Strid Bergès-Frisbey, Sam Riley, Liam Cunningham, Luis Tosar, Axel Stein, José Coronado, and Famke Janssen star in the movie.
The plot follows marine salvage expert Walter Moreland who In 2009, along with his crew recovered a treasure from a sinking 17th century Spanish ship. The Spanish government seizes the treasure and locks it up in a vault inside the Bank of Spain because they have no legal claim to it. Although nothing is known about the vault’s architecture or features, it is said to be the most secure in the world. A series of coins used by Sir Francis Drake to show where he buried the immense amounts of treasure he plundered during his tenure as a privateer is among the seized items and Walter wants them back.
He puts together a team that will go and retrieve the coins from the ‘impossible vault’ inside the Bank of Spain and leading the team, acting as their brain power is Thom, a young engineering student who is considered to be somewhat of a genius. They will have only 105 minutes to carry out the heist successfully, while the Bank’s workers are distracted by the 2010 FIFA World Cup final match, which will be broadcasted on a big screen directly in front of the Bank of Spain headquarters so that the people can gather in the square to watch their national team play in the finals.
Movie synopsis
A good heist movie is unrivalled. The usual pace seems to be there, from forming the team to the inevitable double-cross, but it’s still interesting to see how an intricate plan comes together such that the team can walk away from the heist as millionaires. This almost 2 hour movie manages to keep you hooked because of the plotline and a constant sense of danger and the possibility of the crew being caught and as the audience, one can’t really help but root for the underdogs.
The movie begins with Walter and his team taking treasures from a shipwreck off the Spanish coastline. They salvage many artefacts however, we come to know that Walter is looking for a box containing 3 coins in specific which holds the coordinated for a massive amount of buried treasure left behind by Sir Francis Drake. They unfortunately get caught by Spanish coast guards and all of what they have salvaged is seized. We then see them fight a court case which rules in the favor of the Spanish government and denies Walter and his team access to the treasures. We also see that Walter is in contact with a British government official but she also says that she cannot help him anymore.
Seeing that he cannot go through official channels anymore, he assembles a crew to help him retrieve the treasure. This crew consists of Lorraine, James, Simon, Klaus and lastly, Thom who is recruited by Walter to be the brains behind the operation.
Despite being centuries old, this vault that they have to break into is a technological wonder. The vault will flood if the weight of the vault changes. This is because it’s structured like a scale, and the burglar inside will be imprisoned and drowned once the flood occurs. This is the tricky part, because while the crew has already forged the keys to the safe and collected Gustavo’s fingerprints for access, they do not know how to access the vault without triggering the flooding mechanism. Fortunately, on a night out with Lorraine, Thom spots a remedy while watching a smokey drink being produced at a pub with the help of liquid nitrogen.
The vault thus follows the crew on their mission to retrieve the 3 coins and is met with various twists and turns which are explained below along with an explanation of what happens in the end and if Walter and his crew actually manage to secure the coins or not.
Twists and turns
There is no good heist movie without a twist or two and this one has multiple moments which cause us to hold on to the edge of our seats.
The first twist is when the head of security of the bank, Gustavo realises someone has broken into the bank and secures images of Simon and Thom’s faces via the security cameras. This happens after Tom and Simon enter the bank under the guise of being cleaners so that they can scan the vault and get a blueprint. Lorraine also enters on the very same day and secures copies of the two keys needed to unlock the vault. Thom ends up setting off the alarm while he uses the device to scan the vault underneath and the paranoid Gustavo finally finds out that the two of them came inside under false pretences. He amps up security however, Walter manages things from his end by telling Margaret (his friend who is a British government official) to inform the Bank of Spain that Thom and Simon have been arrested.
With the first part of the plan being a success, and after Thom figures out that liquid nitrogen is the way they can stop the scale from tipping, they proceed to the final day of the heist. Thom learns that freezing the scale with liquid nitrogen will slow down atomic activity, making weight fluctuations undetectable. When they enter, Simon uses 500 litres of nitrogen to infiltrate beneath the vault, allowing James, Lorraine, and Thom to walk through when the vault is opened. Since they are unable to enter through below the ground, they enter through above and for the most part, they go undetected. However, once they are inside the vault area, a pigeon flies inside through the dome skylight they had opened and come through, triggering the motion sensors. This sends Gustavo into a frenzy and all the security personnel are notified and everyone rushes to their positions, cornering the three crew members inside the vault.
They successfully enter the vault and the coins are secured, but the nitrogen thaws soon, triggering the alarms. Not only are the alarms triggered, but also the biggest betrayal in the movie takes place here. Unfortunately, James is a former MI6 agent who turns on the squad for the Crown. He takes the coins from them while holding them at gunpoint but he is also unable to exit the vault in time and the water starts filling up. He says that the only way out are the water channels and they can swim through the water holes since the chamber floods. However, he also tells them that it’s a perilous journey that only James can undertake owing to his military skills and ability to hold his breath. He leaves them behind and swims away on his own.
Water fills up the entire vault and things seem very sad and forlorn for a few minutes but Simon saves the day. Thom has the realisation that the vault will only stop filling itself with water if the scales have enough weight on it to feel that all the water has been filled up. Understanding this, he has Simon place the empty canisters of liquid nitrogen at the bottom of the scale. It fools the vault’s weight recognition system and causes the balance to move downward, allowing the water to drain.
This allows Thom and Lorraine to slip out of the crowd and via the vents. They remain trapped in the bank but Lorraine recalls that the chairman keeps his window open because he is a smoker and they escape through the window in his office. Gustavo’s troops are unable to fire on them because of the sheer number of people in the square who are there to watch football however, they pursue them on foot, through the crowd. Lorraine and Thom remove their dark clothes to reveal the football jerseys they were wearing underneath in hopes of blending in. We then see Thom and Lorraine exchange a kiss, fearing that they’ll be discovered, but Spain, fortunately, wins the 2010 World Cup and thieves slip away, disguised as Spanish supporters, as the crowd explodes in cheers, causing the forces to lose sight of them and get carried away by the crowd.
After this we see the crew gathered in a large mansion where they toast to their success and we realise that the coins James took were fakes and the real ones were safe and sound with Walter.
Ending explained
“The Vault’s” climax has everything you’d expect from a heist movie. A booby trap, a double-cross, and even another double-cross for the legendary quadruple-cross is all present. It’s a little difficult to follow at times, but here’s what happened in the end.
James is revealed to be a double agent who threatens to prosecute the real perpetrators. He gets away with the expensive coins, only for his supervisor, Margaret, to figure out he’s been deceived. She knows the coins are phoney because they reveal the location of an even greater treasure which is simply, Margaret’s favorite place to go to since she admits in an earlier scene that for all the times she has been to Paris, she had never climbed up the Eiffel Tower. The duplicate location was set as the Eiffel Tower. In the next scene we learn that Walter had been convinced all along that James would turn out to be a rat because while he was a good man, he was loyal to his country and his job as that of a soldier. Knowing this, Walter had Lorraine use her pickpocket abilities to switch the false coins for the genuine ones in the vault itself. Walter and his team now have hold of the three authentic coins as they sit in a lavish villa and celebrate their success.
Walter utilises the coins to demonstrate that Sir Francis Drake’s fortune is, in fact, stashed someplace within the Bank of London as they triangulate the location using the coordinates engraved in the coin. The entire movie was thus a ruse to find a path to the greatest reward the world has ever seen. With the promise of more treasures for these cunning thieves to take, we should have a pretty good idea that “The Vault 2” is probably on the way.
“The Vault” finishes with a glimpse of Walter and his crew preparing for their next theft at the Bank of London. In the job that takes place in the Bank of Spain, the 2010 World Cup in Spain is one of the film’s important themes and this seems to continue. The squad decides to break into the next vault during the 2012 Olympics in London, keeping in line with their earlier usage of major events as a cover. They appear to be counting on the overworked police force and massive crowds to help them pull off an even greater heist.
If you are someone who enjoys heist movies and watching elaborate planning to pull off massive thefts, then this one will definitely be an enjoyable watch for you!