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HeistRating:
Release Date: 03 February, 2004 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $12.99 You SAVE: $1.99! Cast: Complete Cast (7 total) |
Heist Reviews
Love Makes The World Go 'Round... Love Of Gold."
This was a very interesting crime thriller. The acting was quite good, and the triple-crossing plot was very unique. It is too bad that a film such as this would get a bare-bones DVD release.
"Question: What makes the world go round?
Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) has a beautiful young wife, money owed to him, and a job he loves. He's a thief. His job goes sour when he gets caught on security camera tape. His fence, Bergman (Danny DeVito) reneges on the money he's owed, and his wife (Rebecca Pidgeon) may be betraying him with the fence's young lieutenant (SAM ROCKWELL). Moore and his partner, Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo) and their utility man, Pinky Pincus (Ricky Jay) find themselves broke, betrayed, and blackmailed. Moore is forced to commit his crew to do Bergman's one Last Big Job. Will Bergman shop Moore to the police? Will Moore's wife trade him in for a younger model? Will Blane and Pincus cut their losses and get out? Who is to be believed, who is to be betrayed? Won't someone who's lied once, lie again? Who's going to walk away smiling, and who's not going to walk at all?
Answer: Love makes the world go round. Love of Gold."
This film had the potential to have a nice amount of supplemental material... but the fact remains that this disc is very bare. The only special features that are included are the theatrical trailer and filmographies.
This is a cool film, but the DVD release was very basic. The sound and picture are adequate but not stellar, and the special features are weak. If you are looking for a good film on DVD, and don't care about supplements, buy this disc.
One double cross too many...
Mamet does not write reality in my opinion. You hear some of the quotes and you tend to think: "Who talks like that?"
However, it is intriguing to hear it come from this ensemble cast. With an inferior cast (like the one in Spanish Prisoner, which I still liked the first time I saw it) it would have been wasted, but the three leads (Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo and Danny DeVito) give it a crisp take that I found to be refreshing (even if the script was contrived).
Joe Moore is an old master thief who thought he did his last job (I guess he doesn't realize the "rule" that a last job for a thief usually involves killing your boss in a double cross), but is lured into another one by Mobster Bergman. He has a crew, including long term partners Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo), Pinky (Ricky Jay) and wife Fran (Rebbecca Pidgeon). Their job this time around is the robbing of a shipment leaving an undisclosed airport bound for Switzerland. However, there is a problem. Bergman wants his nephew Jimmy Silk (Rockwell) involved, maybe to get his feet wet, or to watch that they are not doublecrossed. He is reckless and without patience. He is not eager to learn and thinks he is wise beyond his years, but he is not as stupid as he appears to be. This wildcard is the reason that the crew begin their double crosses.
Mamet intrigued us with his take on the con-world with his excellent House of Games. He also did a very good job with The Spanish Prisoner. But this plot seems to be tired, especially since I saw "The Score" with Robert DeNiro and Ed Norton a month earlier. They have similar plotlines and while Heist is superior in terms of Dialogue, the Score had more of a payoff and better pacing. There are also things about the movie that bother me. The first is the yet again Hollywood obsession about placing a young woman with an old guy. Yes, Hackman doesn't always look his years, but he's past 70 and Pidgeon looks more like his daughter. It's creepy to see them together. The other is that Joe Moore is a skilled thief who must have spent decades as a thief. He has nothing to show for it. I don't think so...
Sam Rockwell also does a good job. He is the straight man, he is the observer and is always overshadowed by the leads but he does hold his own. The disappointing characters are Pinky (they double cross their mobster boss and he doesn't run?) and Fran. They also bothered me in the Spanish Prisoner. Their static talk drive me up the wall and the last thing Ricky Jay looks like is a thief of any sort.
As in House of Games and Spanish Prisoner, there are twists and turns everywhere, but many of them are fairly predictable. There are no "ooohs" and "aaahs" from the audience as if they are fooled. Maybe we are just too use to seeing Mamet films that the shock of a double cross wore off a long time ago. Without this surprise factor, the Heist becomes a flat film with no real interest....Rating: C
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