The ambitiously titled “Freedom” is a heist picture that makes more promises than it keeps.

The latest feature from actress turned director Mélanie Laurent (“Now You See Me,” “The Flood”) sets up as a French Robin Hood tale of an idealistic adrenalin junky who robs from the bourgeoisie and lives large on the proceeds. but never quite delivers on that premise.

We see our anti-hero make a show of tearing up the checks of proletarian grocery shoppers after he’s emptied out supermarket safes early on. But Bruno Sulak covets the thrill of the thievery more than the politics of “freedom” from debt and living life by society’s rules.

“Freedom” still makes a passable star vehicle for actor (“Emily in Paris”) and model Lucas Bravo, the pretty boy center of this fictionalized “true story” about an ’80s armed robber so handsome witnesses blushed when they tried to describe him to the cop (Yvan Attal of “Munich” and “Rush Hour 3”) on his trail.

The twenty-something Bruno hits assorted supermarkets with his hulking accomplice Drago (Steve Tientcheu). They’re armed and menacing, but “We’re not here to kill people.”

His runway-ready lover Annie (Léa Luce Busato) waits in whatever car they’ve stolen for this job, ready to drive them to whatever remote, well-appointed farmhouse they’re holed up in.

The robberies are tense but typically non-violent. The take isn’t spectacular, and the money goes through his fingers too easily for this to be sustainable.

But in this pre-Internet, limited CCTV camera past, a lot depends on the eyewitnesses who can’t help but note that descriptions and mug shots don’t do him justice.

“He’s much BETTER looking in person!”

Bruno may complain to the cop “Stop following us (in French, or dubbed into English).” “Don’t you have other criminals to put away?”

“You’re my FAVORITE,” the cop explains.

But the film’s lighter touches — permissive policing, incarceration as just a new “challege” and gamble for our hustler to master — aren’t light enough to make this a “caper comedy.” And the conventions of such a story, borne out by the reality of armed-robbery “careers,” prove too much for the script’s self-proclaimed “freedom” ethos to overcome.

Radivoje Bukvic is the Yugoslavian Steve, too cool, clever and accomplished to be caught and a real assett to their “crew.” David Margia plays the careless punk Patrick, whose arrival signals that they’re about to go down.

Attal, who has aged into an Eric Idle look-alike, strikes the right shrugging civil servant tone as the cop who lives for his own challenge — catching this rogue. Veteran character actor Slimane Dazi of “A Prophet” adds sentiment and gravitas as an aged inmate who helps Bruno escape, and is all but brought to tears when Bruno takes a shot at breaking him out, too.

What the film sorely lacks is much in the way of urgency. Even the get-aways are dull. And for all the sexual heat of the Bruno/Annie connection, their relationship lacks weight or drama. He writes her passionate, poetic letters from prison. And?

The heists are by-the-book and the police work generic and haphazard. And trying to shoehorn a moral to the story in the third act, about shifts in cultural attitudes towards crime, criminals and policing, feels more resigned than novel.

Rating: TV-MA, some violence, sex, smoking, nudity, profanity

Cast: Lucas Bravo, Léa Luce Busato, Yvan Attal, Radivoje Bukvic, Slimane Dazi, David Murgia and Steve Tientcheu

Credits: Directed by Mélanie Laurent, scripted by Mélanie Laurent and Christophe Deslandes. An MGM/Amazon release.

Running time: 1:51