The Italian Job and You

The Italian Job

(Remake of another bad heist movie)

Ok, so I saw this one on Friday this time, at 5:30 in the evening on opening night. This film does not deserve to be seen on opening night, it should be seen at the dollar theater for a matinee. The point is, the theater was pretty full except for the eye-destroying seating up front. Smelly people even sat next to me, so it was the full-on American moviegoing experience. The woman 2 seats down from me smelled like she had been bathing in facial astringent. At least she was Oxy-cuted. She was also leaning forward during the whole movie, as if she was right at the maximum range of her glasses and needed to be a row forward but couldn’t fit. She was most likely just insane.

Since I don’t have the time or effort required to totally recap this movie, let me review it for you:

Despite the presence of fewer than 10 total real Italians in this movie, it is called “The Italian Job”. Why? Because the 1968 movie it’s a remake of had that name. It didn’t make sense then either. Here are some better titles for it: “Bad Guy vs. Slightly Less Bad Guys”; “Look at that Charlize Theron”; “Hollywood Heist Movie no. 14326”.

This movie is so light it practically floats. It’s very formulaic, which brings up the question of why formulas exist. Why does Hollywood make the same movie again and again? I mean, it’s one thing to have trailers that bring to mind other, better, more popular movies. It’s another thing to have a formula that creeps up in every movie of a certain genre. It’s moviemaking-by-numbers. It drives me crazy.

<>Putting aside for a second the fact that 90% of Hollywood movies are either actual remakes or sequels or prequels, what does a movie gain from following a formula? Movie-goers are conditioned to read this formula into every movie they see. So, it’s not only distracting, it gives away the ending. Why do they think we want to know the ending?

Example: A heist movie these days must have: 1) At least 2 super-clever heist setpieces, the final one at the end of the movie that they spend the whole movie setting up. 2) A thief who does “just one last heist”, who ends up getting killed, arrested, maimed, or has a generally bad time. 3) The thieves must be suave, cool, and generally lovable instead of Troglodytey like real thieves are. 4) In the end, there must be a twist that shows you how cool the cool thieves really are just when you thought they may not be that cool.

If just one of these formulas were broken, you have a potentially great movie. But Hollywood (and by Hollywood I mean money Producers who worship money and make art for money and only money) won’t even deviate from it a little bit. In this movie, The Italian Job movie I mean, they also give a lot of clues to what will happen at the end. Every line a person speaks is in service to a plot point. So, when lovely Charlize Theron says, “My father cracked safes by hand (whatever that means), but I use technology to streamline the process”, you know that technology will fail and she will have to crack a safe by hand. You also know that the good thieves will win out in the end, and the bad thief will get his comeuppance. Part of the problem might be the writers having an ending to a story in place when they write the middle. A good story flows from plot point to plot point, and the details filled in later. The details can’t drive the plot. When you drive the plot with details, and foreshadowing, and a set ending, you get situations where the audience has to suspend disbelief. It may seem cool to have the main character end up where he has to be by bicycling from rooftop to rooftop – but it’s unbelievable and kills your movie. All the movie can be at that point is just “escapist”. It can have no real meaning. It’s then judged by how good the special effects are and how good it makes the audience feel.

As for this Italian film, the pacing is good, there are cool cars and cool names for people all over the place, Seth Green is funny, Jason Stratham is cool, it’s fun to watch Edward Norton’s barely concealed disdain for the movie itself, it’s not totally stupid, Theron is still hot, Mark Wahlberg is blank but also hot (so I’m told), Mos Def is a little funny and the only black guy in the picture, and a gigantic Samoan called “Skinny Pete” shows up near the end. But as they say on The Simpsons:

“There is no moral. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.”

There are no actual human beings in this movie, except possibly the people who were stolen from in the first place. But they probably deserved it, right? This movie is morally bankrupt -- so what? Pass the popcorn and kool-aid and bring on some Charlize.