TIFF 2026: Our Review of ‘Toy Gun Bandit’

Posted in Festival Coverage, TIFF 2026 by - September 10, 2026
TIFF 2026: Our Review of ‘Toy Gun Bandit’

Through the eyes of 15-year-old Félix (Félix Munger) it is clear that nice guys finish last. While it’s obvious that the young man is very compassionate sort, he also aches for attention. He dyes his hair blue and tells his friends to take videos of him setting alcohol on fire as he does a shot. But, that yearning to be ‘cool’ is about to bend Félix’s moral compass. 

Rémi St-Michels’ second feature follows the teenager in the suburbs of Quebec City making increasingly bad decisions.  What starts as a joke stealing beer from a local gas station snowballs into Félix joining forces with Dave (David Beaudoin) who is out on parole, and Sara (Sara Montpetit) a young drug addict. The trio start robbing banks. Terribly at first, until Félix comes up with a better plan. He acts with that common air of teenaged invincibility, but as the young attention seeker flaunts his success it attracts a whole other world of problems. 

First time actor Munger manages to keep our protagonist sympathetic despite his poor choices which is essential for this movie to work. Toy Gun Bandit is a gritty, entertaining film that holds its suspense. St-Michels keeps his shots tightly framed, feeling claustrophobic to ramp up the tension, and accompanies the action with power metal that accentuates the frantic nature of our amateur criminals.  It all leads up to a shocking finale before proving that perhaps being ‘cool’ isn’t what Félix thought in the first place.  

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Hillary is a Toronto based writer, though her heart often lives in her former home of London, England. She has loved movies for as long as she can remember, though it was seeing Jurassic Park as a kid that really made it a passion. She has been writing about film since 2010 logging plenty of reviews and interviews since then, especially around festival season. She has previously covered the London Film Festival, TIFF (where she can often be found frantically running between venues) and most recently Sundance (from her couch). She is a member of the Online Association of Female Film Critics. When she’s not watching films or writing about them, she can be found at her day job as a veterinarian. Critic and vet is an odd combination, but it sure is a great conversation starter at an interview or festival!
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