Heist

An old-school jewel thief hopes to do “one last job” before retiring with his crew, but gets forced into one more job, before moving on. To complete the final “heist”, he and his group must bring aboard a new member, who is the nephew of the man arranging the robbery in the first place. Twists and turns ensue.

There are several similarities between this film and another caper flick that came out earlier this year called THE SCORE. First of all, they were both shot in Montreal, Canada (yay!) Secondly, they both star some pretty solid actors (DeNiro, Hackman, etc…) And third of all, but most similar I suppose, they’re both about a guy who wants to pull of the proverbial “last job” of his illegal career, before sailing off to never-neverland with his lady love. What’s the big difference between the two flicks? Two words: David Mamet! He’s the man who wrote and directed this puppy, and he turns things up a few notches in this film, with twists and turns, as you might expect from any Mamet creation (see THE SPANISH PRISONER, HOUSE OF GAMES, GLENGARRY GLENROSS), great dialogue and a consistently charged pace. I enjoyed THE SCORE, but mostly because of its main three actors, whom I adore, but the story was pretty straight-forward, and not all that original. This film doesn’t believe in moving straight-forward, in fact, it thrives on moving sideways, then back, then front again, and sideways once more.

Basically, the film is about conmen and conmen lie for a living. They lie to their partners, they lie to their friends, they lie to the government, and they sure as hell are known to lie to their enemies. But who can you really trust? That’s basically all that these movies come down to and the journey is usually much more interesting when there are clever heist scenarios involved, when all of the actors have obviously come to play and when you can’t really predict who is gonna screw who in the next scene (although as per usual, I’m not hip to Rebecca Pidgeon’s style of acting, which always comes off as “cold and calculated” to me-she’s Mamet’s wife in real life, by the way). In this case, this flick has all that and the added bonus of fun, quirky, dirty dialogue a la Mamet, from which my favorite quotes, are listed below. On the whole, this film entertained me fully, kept me in its web of intrigue during its entire playing time, delivered a very cool “heist”-ish score and offered a number of surprises, despite expecting some. Sure, I picked a couple of them off, but I was always surprised at the next turn and I guess that’s what separates writers like David Mamet from the rest of them…he’s able to take a tired-over-played-overdone-seen-a-million-times-before premise and still, churn out an enjoyable piece of cinema for movie-lovers everywhere. See it if you enjoy thrillers with double-crosses galore, a respectable cast with great performances, especially Hackman and Delroy playing a great one-two team and a satisfying ending. Oh yeah, and see it if you like really good heist movies!

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian