I'm a big fan of F. Gary Gray's work. He was the director of such underappriciated films like Friday, The Negotiator, and A Man Apart. He is just has a really great eye for how things look. His eye is one of the things going for THE ITALIAN JOB, a caper/hiest flick based on the 1969 Michael Caine film of the same name. Not only do we have Gray, but we have a hilarious array of co-stars, great dialogue, and a really sweet,a ction-packed climax involving gold, explosives, three Mini's and a helicopter.
JOB revolves around Charlie Croker and his team of theives. There's Lyle (Seth Green), the hacker who claims to be the real inventor of Napster, Left Ear (Mos Def), an explosives expert who has no hearing in his right ear, Handsome Rob (Jason Statham), the teams driver and lady's man, and Stella (Charlize Theron), an expert safe-cracker. They all team up to steal back $27 million worth of gold from the back-stabbing Steve (Edward Norton) that he stole from them a year earlier.
They team up to produce one of the biggest traffic jams in Los Angeles history only to ferry a armoured car exactly to where they want it, blowing it from the street and stealing the gold, only to be chased by Steve's henchmen.
JOB is great fun to watch, especially during Seth Green's scenes and the final chase. Gray throws his style around with ease and his stars act as if they are not acting, it's great stuff. The acting is all good as well, with the actors given great characters to work with., with maybe the exception of Wahlberg, who has probably the most wooden character in the film. Norton is sleezy, Theron is sexy, and Green, Statham, and Mos Def are all hilarious.
THE ITALIAN JOB is great summer fair, nothing else. It is not a deep film, not a character piece. It's all about the hiest and those sweet little car zooming around inside the sewers and subways of Los Angeles. So go see it for mindless fun that you don't really have to think about, because you will have some fun if you do.
So buy your tickets, your pocorn, your drinks, and your candy, go sit down, shut up, because this movie does a good JOB of keeping you entertained. |
