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Review Archive
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    		•

    FILMS

    Heist (2001)
  • Starring Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ricky Jay

  • Directed by David Mamet

    • I find myself drawn to burglar movies. Anything with a thief or a heist or some sort of delicately planned criminal act involving jewelry or expensive crap has me at the phrase, "synchronize our watches." There's something that compels me to check these movies out. I should note, however, that the compulsion is rarely strong enough to get me into the theater. Rather, it's a three- or four-dollar compulsion. A rental. "Oooh! There's that movie about the thief stuff. That looks cool! Can't wait until it comes out on video," is what I'll usually say.

    And, invariably, I'll love it for the first 3/4 of the film. And then something turns sour or the plot just don't add up. (For a similar feeling, click on my review of the De Niro/Norton movie, The Score.)

    Heist's plot is fairly straight-forward and familiar, with a few twists. Hackman plays a kick-ass thief who's getting out of the life. Unfortunately, on what's supposed to be his last job, he steps in front of a camera without a mask on. He's "made." Which translates to: His life is a little more difficult—all the more reason to quit while he's ahead. For some reason (it's not terribly important) Danny Devito's character, who is Hackman's fence, won't pay Hackman for his last job. Devito has him over a barrel and coerces Hackman to do one more last job. Hackman hems and haws and says, "goddammit" but eventually agrees.

    Heist is an "OK" movie. It has a few nice scenes, but is overall, well, just kinda blah. It doesn't take us anywhere we haven't been before (which isn't a requirement for a "good" film—but it's a nice bonus), and while we're walking down the familiar path of betrayal and burglary, we're shown the wonderful plot holes and difficulties with the story. Well, perhaps they're not plot holes—but they're definitely problematic moments in the script.

    (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

    The relationship between Hackman and the younger woman, played by Rebecca Pidgeon (who I thought was his daughter at first!), is a strange one which, any way you slice the cake, isn't very satisfying. If Hackman never loved her in the first place then why is he planning to spend his life with her (and go out of his way to do so)? However, if he does love her, why isn't there any real sense of loss when she sleeps with the enemy to gain their trust? Or when she leaves Hackman at the end of the flick? I gather that we're supposed to feel that she does it to protect him. That's how we're supposed to feel, but I didn't get that Hackman cared one way or another.

    This is just one example where the Heist failed for me. There's quite a few clever scenes throughout—especially the moments when Hackman & Co. are heisting and planning. Hackman's character always has backups for his backups, which makes you start to assume that, when things go bad, he's planned for it to go bad. Which means, it's actually going good. But at some point, he's got to run out of plans. And, since we're never privy to his plans, I'm never really sure what his back-up plans were, or how far he thought things might go. (I know I'm being a bit vague here, I saw the movie a few weeks ago and am only now getting to the review. But I've forgotten some things. Which may say a little about my memory, but I think that it says more about the film.)

    Again, we run into the same lack of emotion when Pinky (Ricky Jay) gets killed. His supposed friends just kinda shake their head and say, "What a shame." If I was Hackman's character, I would've felt guilty as hell. Pinky was only on the job because of Hackman's character....

    If this was just some no-name flick with no-name actors, I'd say Heist was "not bad." But I love Gene Hackman. He's one of my favorite actors, and as such, it left me a little disappointed when I didn't love Heist. Because I really wanted to. The cast is good. Even Devito, who I can take or leave, is always enjoyable as a rat-bastard. In Heist he's like the Taxi character Louis DePalma. But with a gun.

    (Please note that I'm not attributing the failures of this film to the actors, but rather to the scriptwriter or director—which I just realized is the same guy: David Mamet. This turns into a double shame, as his scripts are usually very strong with wonderful dialogue. See Untouchables or Glengarry Glen Ross for proof.)

    All in all: I wouldn't recommend Heist unless there's nothing else to rent. It's not bad for a big-group movie night—but it has little meat and will leave most viewers unsatisfied. At least that's how I felt. The ending is supposed to be bittersweet, but for me the ending was just a place where the credits rolled. I guess Hackman's character wins, in a way, but I didn't really care that he lost a friend and his woman, or that he got away with the gold.