Review of The Italian Job (1969) by Nikolayg — 13 Aug 2015

The first half hour of this remake is great fun. I especially enjoyed seeing Donald Sutherland. I lost interest after that. Things immediately flagged in the second act, which shifted focus almost exclusively to Mark Wahlberg, a despicable human being who I have a hard time watching in anything.

A violent and repeat criminal who blinded a man in one eye in a vicious attack. Why is this guy not in prison? He also just doesn't have charisma the way movie stars should. Do women find him sexy? If so, I don't know why.

Charlize Theron played an uninteresting character cliche, and for a woman who looks incredibly sexy in still photos, she was somehow utterly unsexy in motion here. It was as if she didn't care, but was just reading lines.

I know she can act, but here she just had no intensity and no passion, no charisma. I just couldn't maintain my interest and stopped watching about 40 minutes in. Listen, maybe the movie got great the second after I turned it off, but one has to make decisions based on the information one has.

The information I had told me I was wasting my time. Someone needs to make a movie starring Donald Sutherland again, rather than just using him as a minor supporting player. That guy knows what he's doing.