June 3, 2003 -- “The Italian Job” is a slickly-made tongue-in-cheek heist movie with a marvelous cast and nifty stunts. It is so well-polished one can overlook the fact that the plot is full of movie clichés. This is a remake of the 1969 film of the same name with a lot of updated technology.

Mark Wahlberg (“Rock Star”) stars as Charlie Croker, a lifetime thief who specializes in high tech safe cracking capers. The film opens with Croker and his highly skilled team of specialists pulling off a nifty safe heist in Venice, Italy. One of his team members, Steve Frezelli (played by Edward Norton of “The 25th Hour”) is a traitor. He kills the safecracker, John Bridger (Donald Sutherland of “Space Cowboys”), tries to kill the rest of the team, and escapes with $30 million in gold.

Croker and his surviving team members vow to hunt down Frezelli and get their gold back. Years pass and they finally find Croker. He still has the gold, hidden in an ultra-secure house inside of a high tech safe that no one on the team can open. Croker approaches the one person who can crack the safe, John Bridger's daughter, Stella (Charlize Theron of “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion”). Other members of the team are computer wizard Lyle “Napster” (Seth Green of “Austin Powers in Goldmember”), wheelman Handsom Rob (Jason Statham of “The Transporter”), explosives expert Left Ear (Mos Def of “Showtime”), and automotive expert Wrench (Franky G. of “Confidence”). Speaking of Wrench, he hops up a trio of MINI cars, similar to the Mini Coopers used in the original 1969 film. It so happens the new MINIs are just now going on the market. Not a coincidence, that.

The story is about what you would expect from this genre of film, a fine example of which is “Ocean's 11.” What sets this apart from the usual heist movie is the excellent cast, headed by Norton, who makes a great bad guy. Green is also very good as the quirky computer expert who insists that Napster was his idea, stolen from him by his college roommate. All of the characters are smartly-written and well-acted. Even minor characters in this film have a refined edge to them that you don't see in the average heist movie. The stunt work in the film is also outstanding with a great car chase and a great boat chase. One chase scene even has a helicopter chasing three MINI cars (which have a top speed of over 130 miles per hour). The most spectacular chase scene has the MINIs being pursued through a large circular tunnel at high speed by gunmen on motorcycles. The production values are very solid in this film and the cinematography by Wally Pfister (“Insomnia”) is excellent. Director F. Gary Gray (“A Man Apart”) does a good job maintaining interest, suspense and pacing throughout the film. This film, while buried in movie clichés and holding to a predictable, well-travelled story line, is a lot of fun to watch. It rates a B.

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Copyright © 2003 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.