Review of The Italian Job (2003) by Hotelcentral — 04 Nov 2020

Really has nothing to do with the original film except, you know, the main characters are all criminals.

The original was a straight caper flick. Every scene was either leading up to or leading away from the Great Crime of the Century and when it's all over our moral standards are rescued from enjoying a film in which the bad guys actually get away with the crime.

In the remake, we start off with a crime, then a betrayal, and from that a tale of revenge, which consumes 85-90% of the runtime. We do some boating in Venice, but that's about it for Italy. We visit something that could be Switzerland, but then it's on to LA for most of the film. And, yes, we do get a trio of Mini Coopers, and a computer whiz who does amazing things with traffic control, but that's about all the remake has in common with the original.

And, basically, this film is just as silly as the original. Just as silly as James Bond and a thousand other action fantasies. I mean, the main characters could walk in, blow away their betrayer, and take back the gold, but how much more satisfying it would be to plan a whole big Mission Impossible style heist to steal the gold, which the betrayer naturally discovers, and then concoct a big bang-up finale in which some evil third party takes the betrayer prisoner and promises to torture him to death. And that way we're saved from being forced to recognize that the bad guys, the criminals, have won, and we're swimming through a movie with a moral compass that only Donald Trump could love.

It's possible I missed it, I guess, but I don't remember ever finding out who got ripped off for the gold in the first fifteen minutes of the film.

And the romance scenes were just bleh.