Movie 6: Heist

Heist (2001) by David Mamet
starring Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, & Sam Rockwell

In a nutshell: A throw-away

Content: I originally watched Heist in college on DVD and the only things that I remembered were Danny DeVito, Gene Hackman, a shoot out on a boat, and a pipes in the back of a pickup truck as the movie ended. I decided to give Heist another watch because it turned up on a best Heist movie list on one of the credible podcasts that I listen to. As I have rewatched other movies from those years, they have come back to me as I watched them, but for the most part, watching Heist was like watching it for the first time all over again. I have a feeling that I will, once again, forget this movie within a few years time because it was not a memorable one.

I am usually somewhat flexible with plots that push believability a bit, but this one bothered me. Specifically movies like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and the Ocean's series. The complicated capers in these movies depend on the schemers being able to predict exactly how their marks will react to the scheme. Of course, the degree to which they are able to predict is completely unreasonable, but perhaps I am more willing to let it go in HP and Ocean's because watching the story unfold is so much fun. However, the proceedings in Heist are utterly joyless. There isn't a hint of humor throughout this entire film. I had a serious problem with the sheer number of backup plans that the crew had in place, and the fact that they just so happened to have the perfect number of backups. If Hackman's wife really knew him so well, she should have known not to trust him in the end. I will try not to give away too many details, but it's barely worth the effort.

The acting was very ho-hum despite very likeable presences. I normaly love to see Ricky Jay show up in a movie, but he brought nothing to Heist. I didn't particularly like Hackman's character which is usually necessary in a heist movie if you are to root for the 'bad guys'. Can you imagine Ocean's Eleven if Danny Ocean wasn't a likeable guy whom you wanted to get away with his theft? I found Rebecca Pidgeon to be stunningly beautiful, but flat. Rockwell was unmemorable. Lindo was the only character that I really wanted to get away with something in the end. Devito was a decent bad guy.

There were entire sequences that seemed unneccessary to me. The crew goes through a whole ruse to make Rockwell thinks that they have fallen out with Lindo and therefore cannot do the job. But of course they do it anyway, and that sequence did not end up contributing anything except that it reinforced the facts that Lindo, Jay, and Hackman are really close, and that Rockwell might have a thing for the girl (even though it also makes no sense that he would have developed these feelings).

I realize that this is Mamet, a normally highly regarded screenwriter, but I felt that the dialogue often felt out of place . Sure, there were some high points, but the majority of it did not feel natural at all, Pidgeon especially. In his masterpiece, Glengarry Glen Ross, the dialogue doesn't feel natural either, however that entire film has a very theatrical feel to it, something that a heist movie does not normally have. As a result, Heist feels very unnatural. Also, Mamet's direction didn't do much for me.

I could go on, but I won't. The movie did engage me and I didn't consider turning it off or anything, but I found the story to be deeply flawed. I could not buy in how Mamet wated me to. Heist is a forgettable movie.

Rolling Rankings:
1. Sideways (#1)

2. Napoleon Dynamite (#5)

3. Raising Arizona (#2)

4. Grave of the Fireflies (#4)

5. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (#3)

6. Heist (#6)