Heist Film review

certificate_15

HEIST

"Cute plan," Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon) says of Joe Moore's (Gene Hackman) robbery scheme. "Cute as a Chinese baby," smiles Moore. Unfortunately the plan, like Heist, is just a little too cute. Writer and director David Mamet is more interested in providing his characters with neat one-liners than any substance. Having created a legacy of films that have found critical acclaim but small audiences, Heist is clearly Mamet's attempt to make a Hollywood movie. In that it's a laboured and generic caper he's succeeded, but being Mamet he's unable to restrain his pretentious tendencies with the result that it's probably too smug for the masses and too dumb for his hardcore fans.

Heist begins with Joe Moore and his accomplices, Bobby (the always brilliant Delroy Lindo), Pincus (Ricky Jay) and Joe's wife Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon) robbing a jewellery store. When Joe is inadvertently captured on security cameras he's determined to take his cut, his wife and his boat and sail off into oblivion. The only problem is Bergman (Danny DeVito), the sleazy and callous fence and backer, who blackmails Joe into robbing a plane of its shipment of Swiss gold and insists that Joe include Bergman's young nephew Jimmy (Sam Rockwell) in on the job.

The reluctant inclusion of the cocky Jimmy into Joe's tight-knit group disturbs their once harmonious ensemble. Jimmy misses few opportunities to undermine the savvy but ageing Joe, while hitting on his wife. Being Mamet, he's less interested in the mechanics of the robbery, preferring instead to focus on the relationships and loyalties of the thieves. While the trio of Hackman, DeVito and Lindo are a forceful presence, both Pidgeon and Jay seem ill-suited to their roles. Mamet's stylised dialogue is effective and amusing in the right hands but clumsy and forced when delivered by lesser talents.

Mistrust is a recurring theme in Mamet's work as people constantly cross and double cross each other. It's a topic that provides the central thrust of Heist to the point where you're never certain who is aligned with who. The twists also extend to the whereabouts of the stolen gold as Bergman tries to outmanoeuvre Joe. The trouble is that by the end the turns become so frequent and predictable it simply becomes tiresome.