‘Cut Throat City’ Review: The RZA Directs a Tale of Gangsta Desperation in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Heist films, from “Rififi” to “Ocean’s Eleven” to “Widows,” are all about the planning.

They’re missions impossible, and the fun of almost every heist movie is: Can it make the intricacy of a robbery thrilling yet plausible? But in “Cut Throat City,” the third feature directed by the RZA, the posse of desperate amateur thugs who rip off a New Orleans casino scarcely have a plan, and does that ever show.

It’s part of the film’s volatile but ramshackle design.At first, they sit “innocently” at the slot machines, wearing hoodies.

Then they pull down stocking masks that barely conceal their faces.

One of them approaches the cashier, pointing a weapon in classic this-is-a-stickup mode, and the other two attack a guard and have to figure out, right there, how to jimmy open the rolling-cart vault with the chips in it.

Somehow, they make it out with

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