On paper—or, as the case may be, on a computer screen—the cast of The Forger sounds good enough to lift even the most basic of plot premises out of the doldrums. The film stars John Travolta, Christopher Plummer, and Tye Sheridan as three generations of one art-forging family, who all go to work together to, well, forge things. In actual practice, however, The Forger looks like its own kind of low-rent fake art.

Travolta stars in the film as the so-called “world’s best art forger,” who somehow makes a deal with a crime family who can help finagle him an early release from prison (seems double-illegal, no?) as long as he pulls off one more “impossible heist.” (We’re going to go ahead and guess it’s also “one last job,” just for good measure.) Predictably, he enlists the help of his dad (Plummer) and his son (Sheridan) for the gig, because all families bond in different ways.

Yahoo! Movies has the first trailer for the film, which makes one last forgery job look like the least of this family’s worries:

The trail of the tape
Title: The Forger
Director: Philip Martin
Screenwriter: Richard D’Ovidio
Cast: John Travolta, Christopher Plummer, Tye Sheridan, Anson Mount
Release date: March 26, 2015 (DirecTV), April 24 (VOD and theaters)
The entire trailer in one line of dialogue: “It’s a stupid plan, what makes you think you’re going to pull it off?”
The entire trailer in one screengrab: 

As we all know, trailers are not the movie, yet it’s hard to deny that this trailer has a very strange tonal problem that may be reflective of the film’s actual content. It initially presents itself as a suitably gritty and dark crime tale, one with prison and bad dudes and a horrible accent from Travolta, but still, one with a pervasive sense that things aren’t great and might not actually turn out great either. Over the course of just two minutes, however, it morphs into a weirdly peppy and feel-good family-centric feature, albeit one that is mostly about illegal crime.

So, what’s the true film and what’s the fake one?