A stranger in need is trouble indeed. Rémi St-Michel’s Toy Gun Bandit is an adrenaline-driven crime gala that speaks to how messy an adolescent’s plan can go wrong when monitoring is absent, all heightened by actor Félix Munger’s high-octane performance.
When a grown child speaks of their dreams, we see the fire in their eyes before we see the cracks in the plan. They haven’t met the world yet — and that’s just growing up. But if that fragile dream becomes fuel, and the flaws and mess come along for the ride, the result can be catastrophe. Director Rémi St-Michel explores this phenomenon in his TIFF entry this year, Toy Gun Bandit.
Felix isn’t the kind of kid waiting to grab candy from a jar. He’s active, impulsive, and almost destructive in how he chases adventure in Quebec City’s busy streets. He commits petty crimes, occasionally disapproved of by friends, mostly unnoticed by his parents. One day, he meets Dave, an adult stranger, on a rough day — and Dave offers him a plan with his partner to rob a bank. Felix is excited, agrees, and sees only the beauty in the outcome. Yet the beast is already beside him, waiting to teach him what he doesn’t want to learn.
Xavier Dolan’s spirit breathes through this film, especially in the portrait of a boy stumbling through adolescence with no hand to guide him. Felix is raw power — youth in its wildest form. No direction, no fear, just risk, just motion, just boredom, just the beautiful and ugly chaos of being young. The film opens a door into crime — a GTA world made real where adults circle kids like sharks, seeing them as tools, as chances to be exploited. Felix is sharp, but his energy burns like wildfire — restless, uncontainable, the kind that never sits still.
Felix still carries an immaturity that desperation doesn’t recognise as weakness. Along with the adult criminals, they are shown as a bunch of amateurs confronting life’s absurdity — and equally absurd is seeing a kid’s wild imagination treated as a real plan. The director lifts this into the film’s pulse — kids on wild adventures, burning for transformation, unaware of the circumstances. Crime has its own hierarchy — hard, unforgiving, never easy to navigate. The film traces the familiar climb through its layers, and escape is rarely the answer. But the editing by St-Michel himself holds every segment tight and sturdy. And in Felix, we see a trace of empathy — a fragile heart watching everywhere, where hope still flickers for any troubled kid.
Produced by Jeanne-Marie Poulain, TIFF Centerpiece selection Toy Gun Bandit is a crime gala soaked in adrenaline — an action film that reveals what troubled kids are capable of, and the catastrophe they can unleash on a world that fails to hold them, that fails to watch over them. Félix Munger, as Felix, is the film’s spine — he shows us the full, restless truth of an impulsive adolescent through his pumped performance. With betrayal, greed, and revenge swirling around the film, Toy Gun Bandit might be an unmissable film at TIFF this year.
But the line that chills the most is the one that begins, “This is almost a true story.” As it might already be someone’s plan — proof of how twisted the world becomes when seen through the wrong eyes, the wrong mind, the wrong age.
The 51st edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) runs September 10–20, 2026
