. . . when you look at this one in the rear-view mirror, the revenge and recovery plot wasn't a bad choice at all.
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It's tough to top the opening sequence from "The Italian Job," in which 35 million dollars in gold bars are coolly plucked from a Venetian villa in a "Thunderball"-style operation. It's inventive, it's stylish, and it features the suave and genial Donald Sutherland as aging safecracker John Bridger, who couldn't resist the pull of doing one last big caper with the old gang.
Compared to him, they're a bunch of youngsters who can only hope to become as savvy (and as charismatic onscreen) as their legendary former leader. The new planner, John's favorite son, Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg), knows how to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s, but he doesn't have that cat-burglar charm or the larcenous twinkle in the eye that shows he really enjoys it as much as John and every sophisticated cat burglar who could pass for a jet-setter by day and slink across rooftops by night. The driver, Handsome Rob (Jason Statham), has a utilitarian smoothness that enables him to pick up girls, but not a blanket savoir faire. Lyle (Seth Green) is a computer geek who can take over a city's entire stoplight program or calculate which of a half dozen armored cars is carrying the load of gold, but he's way too self-congratulatory. Cool is what he does, not who he is. Then there's demolitions expert Left Ear (Mos Def), who's funny and charismatic in a comic relief sort of way. That leaves Steve (Edward Norton), who seems just as eager to shoot his way to riches and seems lacking in both imagination and flair. All of which is to say that compared to John Bridger, none of these guys has the screen presence to heist an audience's interest every time they're in front of the camera.
Too bad, then, that we lose Sutherland so early in the film. We also leave Europe and all that exotic scenery that's evocative of a James Bond adventure. In short order, dramatic shots of Venice and the Austrian Alps give way to the familiarity of traffic-stalled Los Angeles. In the U.S., "The Italian Job" turns out to be a story of calculated revenge and reclamation. But to the credit of writers Donna and Wayne Powers and director F. Gary Gray, they manage to keep the momentum going so that despite the visual and stylistic losses, "The Italian Job" is still an engaging recovery-and-retribution caper film.
With Bridger dead and the others presumed dead, Steve is living large--watching his large-screen TV and hitting on the cable lady, who just happens to be Bridger's daughter, Stella (Charlize Theron), working undercover with the old gang. They plot how to get around the vicious guard dogs, the electronic sentries, the armed guards, and the adjustments Steve makes when Stella slips and says a phrase he's only heard once before . . . from Bridger. With Steve on to them and the element of surprise gone, "The Italian Job" becomes a cat-and-mouse thriller in which recovering the gold isn't nearly as important as paying Steve back for killing John and trying to whack them. Bring in the local Russian mafia, who become involved when Steve tries to cash in a few of those gold bars, and you've got a fun (if familiar) payback film.
If you like action and stunt-driving but you're not all that crazy about blood and violence, this is a good movie for you. Not one, but three Mini Coopers are driven like mad little toys through the city and down the city's subway and sewer systems, and a helicopter chase is thrown in for good measure. But these chases feel more real because there isn't a fiery explosion every fifteen feet. How often do you see freeway accidents in which vehicles actually burst into flame, as if they were carrying cargoes of high explosives? That doesn't happen here. The emphasis is on the driving and the chase, and that too is refreshing.
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