2003 / 111 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

A great heist movie doesn’t need a whole hell of a lot to succeed for me. Not really. All it needs to do is have a cast of intriguing characters, each with their own little hook and distinctive personality, each of whom feels like a perfect fit with the others and a unique ability to contribute to the heist in question. Also, it needs a good objective for the protagonists to carry out. It also would be nice if that objective had a nice motive behind it, other than simply the acquisition of something worth a great deal of money. Oh, and it needs to have an intangible atmosphere of unassailable coolness in which to marinate.

All of these necessary ingredients line up magnificently in “The Italian Job” and combine to make one of the finest heist films it has ever been my pleasure to see. I never thought I would make such a bold proclamation about a film involving “Marky” Mark Wahlberg. But here I am and here it is.

The film begins with a fabulously clever and unassailably cool heist sequence in Venice, Italy led by Mark and his mentor, Donald Sutherland. They mastermind a perfect heist, escaping with, if I remember correctly, ten million dollars in gold bars. Unfortunately, an unscrupulous member of the team (Edward Norton) double crosses the team, killing Sutherland, making off with the gold and leaving everyone else for dead at the bottom of a fjord. A year or so later, Mark finds the location of Norton and masterminds a plot to retrieve the gold as a sort of revenge. (As mentioned in the film “Trading Places”, the best way to get back at rich people is by simply turning them into poor people.) His team includes not only the original players- Jason Statham (a British action hero god from “The Transporter”), Seth Green (a computer nerd whose character is the real inventor of Napster), Mos Def (as an explosives expert who is deaf in one ear)- but also Charlize Theron as the foxy daughter of Donald Sutherland’s character. Together, they form a quite lively team and hatch a very intricate and clever plot to get the gold back.

The heist in a movie like this is almost inconsequential, at least to me. The real fun is in watching all the characters line up everything they need to do in order to pull the heist off. It’s like watching a porn film in which the foreplay is the best part. I always love scenes where the characters know what they need to get done, buy the equipment and get everything timed like clockwork, and then encounter a setback which forces them to rethink the entire thing. “The Italian Job” is filled with neat little moments like that. This isn’t to say that, when the heist is perpetrated, that it isn’t fun. It’s a hell of an action sequence with all sorts of clever little moments and twists that I wouldn’t dare ruin. But the planning is always my favorite part.

The actors all do a uniformly wonderful job in this film. Statham is a force to be reckoned with as he is in every film. He’s charming, funny and he always seems to be thinking: a rare thing in an action hero. Charlize is sexy and sweeter than ever: the most captivating safecracker I’ve seen in a film. Mos Def is good enough and Seth Green is rather hilarious. And saying that Sutherland is good in this film is almost a waste of space, since he’s great in everything. But the real surprise is the amount of charm and finesse displayed by Mark Wahlberg. He’s actually charming in this film, which came as a shock to me since he usually displays all the charm of a brick wall. And the fact that Edward Norton didn’t want to be in this movie and lets it show actually helps this film. He’s a convincing prick here. So convincing that you get the feeling it isn’t an act. Also, between this movie and “The Score”, we learn that one should never include Norton in any sort of heist. It’s invariably a bad move.

Aside from a slight implausibility problem with the amount of gold they are sneaking away in tiny, little cars, this film is nearly above reproach. It’s nicely paced, oozing with charm and some genuine menace, and it’s got that essence of sheer cool that I mentioned earlier. I really enjoyed the score to this film, the best and most fitting one I’ve heard in any movie so far this year, and the cinematography and the editing were masterful. The director, F. Gary Gray (the same man responsible for the only good “Friday” movie) seems to have a great handle on this material and a winning way with every actor and crew person involved…except maybe Norton, but Norton still works within the confines of the film. This film was far better than I ever expected. I haven’t seen the original version with Michael Caine, so I’m not certain how this one measures up. But I can’t imagine any heist movie being more entertaining than this one.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2003 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.