David Mamet, the writer and director of "Heist," is a genius. He made a crappy movie with a minimum amount of thought and effort and used this shameless vehicle to heist seven dollars out of my pocket and two hours from my life.
I was not a big fan of Mamet's last film, "State and Main," a film in which every character annoyed me,but he did write one of the coolest movies of all time - "The Untouchables" - so I was willing to give "Heist" a chance. The results are disastrous and leave me wondering why so many critics proclaim Mamet a genius and a visionary.
The film begins with grizzled criminal mastermind Joe Moore (Gene Hackman), leading his two equally grizzled associates Bobby (Delroy Lindo) and Don (Ricky Jay) into a jewelry store for a daring daylight heist. Joe's wife, Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon), is also involved in the humorous and creative set-up of the robbery. The engaging initial scenes got my hopes up for a smart and entertaining movie. My hopes were dashed as soon as the robbers entered the bank, and everything ceased to make sense.
Upon entering the bank Joe sees one female teller that is still conscious, and instead of putting on his mask, he comes in pleading for help and then zaps her with a stun gun.
This mistake leads to Joe being caught on the security camera, or "burnt" as the other characters refer to it. I was a little confused as to why Joe went through such pains of making the woman feel safe and comfortable before giving her a stun gun to the back of the neck. Why not just put on your mask? You're going to give a helpless woman a stun gun anyway.
Now we are led to believe the cops will be hot on his trail - an element that would have been interesting except for the fact that not one cop ever gives him trouble. Many cops run into him, and not one gives him any problems. Such a small point normally wouldn't bother me. However, Mamet makes it a big point by telling us Joe is "burnt" about a hundred times, seemingly just to show us he has done his research, and then does not follow up at all on this potential subplot.
The movie then proceeds with Bergman (Danny DeVito), a sleazy stolen wares peddler, forcing Joe's gang into the daring hijack of some Swiss gold from an airliner. Bergman also coerces Joe's gang to take his nephew Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell) with them on the job. The gang pulls this caper off in daylight as well, in a ridiculously convoluted ploy that could never work. It relies on far too much precision and chance.
After the robbery, the film proceeds with every character pulling double cross after double cross on everybody else. No one knows who has the gold, where it is, or who is loyal to whom. Sounds interesting, but it is not. It is just confusing nonsense. Seems that every character, including the dimwitted Jimmy Silk, has about five back-up plans, all of which come off without a hitch.
Then there is the dialogue, those dreadful lines of drivel that jolted me back to the horrible reality that I was actually sitting through this movie. All these so called "Mamet-speak" lines made me laugh loudly, and in places where I shouldn't.
I felt like I was taking the SATs with such thought-provoking similes as: "As cute as a Chinese baby." "As cute as a pail of kittens." "As quiet as an ant pissing on cotton." "As quiet as an ant not even thinking of pissing on cotton." These lines are incredibly out of context, and are totally unacceptable because they're all spoken by different characters. It's one thing if one character has a simile fetish, it's another when it becomes painfully obvious to the audience that the writer is forcing his misplaced witticisms down the throats of his characters and not letting them develop their own speech patterns.
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Then to make matters worse, the plot gets too complicated for Mamet to handle. At one point someone needs to crack and give information to someone else. So conveniently with only 15 minutes left in the movie, one character has a nice heart to heart with his cute little niece for a few seconds. Then two minutes later, the niece is kidnapped in order to get the guy to crack. It's a moment that screams out, "My audience is stupid. I am Mamet. They will buy anything I write. Cha-ching!"
The official Web site for this film pronounces itself a "film-noir heist movie." I couldn't stop laughing for a good five minutes. Film noir? Ridiculous. You want a good film noir heist movie? Go see "Maltese Falcon," go see anything with Bogart, because Mamet and company don't have a clue as to what they are doing.
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