Review of The Italian Job (1969) by Tim H — 11 Jun 2008

I'm really torn on this movie.

The remake of The Italiian Job was an Ocean's Eleven knockoff. Everyone at the time knew it. Although I didn't know at the time, like Ocean's Eleven it was a remake of a lesser known film. Well, apparently The Italian Job is one of those must see movies of yesteryear and I'm just a big idiot. Do I think it really is one of those movies you have to see? Probably not. Did I enjoy it? Yes.

The good part of this movie is the sense of humor. This is Michael Caine's firet real starring role (so I hear) and this is what launched him to the career he has now. I can completely see why. He is extremely funny and sarcastic and cool in this movie. He's got this great British delivery that is impeccable and makes the movie really worth while. Couple with him Benny Hill who plays...well, he plays Benny Hill as a computer scientist. It's more of his womanizing schtick that made him so famous on his television show, only thsi time it's on film.

But the problem really gets bogged down with the plot. There are some characters and situations that really don't make a lot of sense. Who is working with who? Why are they spending so much money? How much money is in the transport? Is it four million or 140 million? Also, the execution is ambiguous until the actual heist. There's also the major problem witht he fact that these theives are actually theives. There is little redeeming about the group. The contemporary film at least had these characters as somewhat noble. Danny Ocean was robbing from an evil man. While the Mafia, in the case of the classic Italian Job would be considered an evil, they aren't robbing it to take money away from the Mafia. It's just robbing Italy and the Mafia doesn't like that. There's little redeemable about these characters and that kind of rubs me the wrong way.

There's a kind of open-ended ending. (I intentionally avoided a pun.) Sometimes that works, sometimes that doesn't. I'm not sure how I feel about it in this case. It just seems like such a silly response to all the buildup that came before that part of the movie. The joke isn't really all that funny to have that ending. But where I do agree with them is that there was almost no way to end the movie barring them going to prison and plotting their next gig. So I knwo why they had that ending, but I'm not the biggest fan.

It's a good movie that relies a lot of the hipness of the style. The late sixties made some cool stuff, but I think it might be dated with all that coolness.