Review of The Italian Job (2003) by Ruiz M — 06 May 2013

A lot of fast-paced, action-packed movies get beat up on because they're, apparently, "boring", and "dull and repetitive", and they are "things we've seen fifty times before", and the movie doesn't "go any deeper within itself.".

But sometimes, when we watch a movie, we don't watch it for it to be brand new or totally original or deep.

Sometimes, we watch a movie just to have FUN.

The Italian Job is a fun movie.

We've got John Bridger (Donald Sutherland) and Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg). They're the leaders of a professional heist team. Along with Steve and Left Ear (Mos Def and Edward Norton), who specialize in explosions, Handsome Rob (Jason Statham), the getaway guy, and Lyle (Seth Green), the computer hacker, they've been making quite an illegal living. I maybe would have liked to see a little more backstory on this and how the group came to be, but, for better or for worse, the movie skips that.

As we begin, the heist team successfully steals gold from an unnamed, unlucky bastard. This opening sequence shows us about the characters and has us latch on to them and care about them. I immediately developed a soft spot for Left Ear, but the movie does well in making the characters somewhat relatable.

They seem to have made a clean getaway and celebrate their success on the top of a mountain. I wondered why they'd go to the Alps to drink beer when they could just drink it at a bar (not to mention how hard it would be to lug all if that gold up there) but whatever. They won. Yay.

But then, tragedy strikes. A member of the heist team betrays them and kills John Bridges. If you're smart, you could probably figure out who the culprit is from the description I gave, but if you don't know, I'm not going to spoil it.

He betrays John, Charlie, and the rest of the team, and runs off with the gold. Later on (a year later, to be exact), Charlie recruits Stella Bridges, John's daughter, a professional safecracker for the police. Again, I wished the movie had introduced her earlier and with a longer scene than included, but we make do with what we have.

Stella is initially hostile to the man who was there when her dad died, but eventually sees the light after thinking about it.

Stealing the gold back isn't about the money anymore. Now, it's personal.

And we get a good movie out of it.

So, what have you got here, in terms of a movie? Well, the events I described happen in twenty or thirty short minutes, and by then the movie is just getting warmed up.

We can predict a long time of staking out the location of the gold, finding weaknesses in its owner, sending Stella in undercover as an electrical technician to get a video recording of the security. Then we have the heist itself, and then the getaway, and then the aftermath. All in all, pretty predictable.

The Italian Job takes this template and makes it their own. Some movies (like Tower Heist, which is pretty much the same thing) stuff it full of sexual innuendos and never really focus much on the characters or the heist itself.

The Italian Job does the opposite of this- sure, there's some inevitable chemistry between Charlie and Stella, and it has its fair share of jokes. But by the time the heist starts, we find ourselves caring more about the characters than waiting for the next funny joke or one-liner to come up.

Bottom Line: In this review, I complained about a bunch of stuff, like poor character integration, a predictable plot, and few major twists and turns. All of these are true.

But you know what? I don't care. Sometimes, we go to the movies to have fun, and The Italian Job is a great example of how that can be done well.