November 5, 2011 -- This is a great idea for a movie that starts out being totally unbelievable and gets steadily more preposterous as it goes along until it comes close to being a spoof of itself. The basic idea is brilliant, the execution falls far short of the concept. If you want to see something similar done right, check out The Italian Job.

The brilliant idea for the story is that you have a villain that everybody loves to hate, a Bernie Madoff-type banker, Arthur Shaw (played by Alan Alda of the “MASH” TV series) who steals money from a bunch of working stiffs by way of a Ponzi scheme. To get their money back, a bunch of working stiffs ripped off by Shaw combine their talents to steal money that Shaw has hidden from the authorities in his penthouse. This is story that has a lot of appeal and a lot of relevance to what is happening today in the real world.

The problem is that the film is too effective in making most of these working stiffs look like they don't have the nerve, intelligence or talent to pull off this heist. Those in on the heist are the manager of the building where Shaw lives, Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller of “Meet the Fockers”), the concierge of the same building, Charlie (Casey Affleck of “Gone Baby Gone”) another worker from the same building, Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe of “Precious”), an elevator operator, Enrique Dev’Reaux (Michael Peña of “Million Dollar Baby”) Lester the doorman (Stephen Henderson) an out-of-work investment analyst, Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick of “The Producers”) and an actual thief recruited to help with the heist, Slide (Eddie Murphy of “Bowfinger”). Aside from Kovacs, it appears these people, including slide, don't have the right stuff to pull off a high-end heist like this.

In addition to this, the actual plan goes horribly wrong, requiring a mid-course adjustment that is actually impossible for a number of reasons. As the plan keeps changing and more things go wrong, it just keeps getting more absurd until it becomes cartoonish. This would be O.K. if it were a farce, but the characters are not portrayed in the manner of a farce. In order for a heist movie like this to work, the plot has to stay close enough to reality so that the audience can suspend their disbelief. This goes so far into the impossible it would be more appropriate for a Roadrunner cartoon. There is a sub-plot involving a sort of romance between Kovacs and an FBI Special Agent Claire Denham (Téa Leoni of “Ghost Town”). It doesn't really work, but it does advance the plot. I wanted to like this movie a lot because it is such a good basic idea, but the plot is just too dumb to work. This film rates a C.

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Copyright © 2011 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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