Before the dead ever start walking in Army of the Dead, one bank teller with a gift for cracking impossible locks gets pulled into a heist that has nothing to do with zombies at all, at least at first.
What is Army of Thieves about?
Ludwig Dieter, a mild-mannered vault specialist played by director Matthias Schweighofer, is living an unremarkable life when a mysterious stranger tracks him down because of a safecracking video he posted online. She recruits him for something far bigger than he ever imagined: a string of legendary European vaults, each designed by the same locksmith and each supposedly unbreakable. Dieter joins a small crew of thieves with very different motives and personalities, and the job takes them across cities in Europe while a global outbreak spreads quietly in the background, turning ordinary security concerns into something much stranger. As the crew moves from one vault to the next, tension builds not just from the locks and the alarms but from the group itself, as loyalties shift and Dieter is pushed to become someone bolder than the cautious man he started as.
About the cast
Matthias Schweighofer both directs and stars as Ludwig Dieter, reprising the character he introduced in Army of the Dead and giving him a lighter, more comedic register here. Nathalie Emmanuel plays the enigmatic recruiter who sets the plot in motion, while Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin, Guz Khan, and Jonathan Cohen fill out the crew, each bringing a distinct skill and a distinct personality to the group. Noemie Nakai and Christian Steyer round out a cast pulled from across Germany, the United Kingdom, and France.
Context & significance
Army of Thieves works as a prequel and companion piece to Army of the Dead, but it swaps large-scale zombie action for a heist comedy set in the early days of a spreading outbreak, letting the tone lean toward European caper films rather than horror. Its genre mix of action, crime, mystery, and science fiction reflects that hybrid approach, and the choice of real European cities and famously secure vault designs gives the heist sequences a grounded, almost historical texture even inside a story that is ultimately building toward the undead.
Watching Army of Thieves on Ktime
K-Time streams Army of Thieves with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, letting viewers enjoy the heist banter and the character work in Farsi. A free K-Time account login is all that is needed to start watching, and the film sits within K-Time's wider Farsi-language catalogue, built around a fast, native-feeling interface designed for Persian-speaking viewers.