Heist

Review by By Clint Morris

Sliding down the descending scale of Director's Supremacy, David Mamet emerges with one of his more pedestrian efforts, Heist, an agreeable but middling addition to the thriller genre.

Like an air-filled bag of chips, Heist looks appetizing on the outside, but inside there is only a small portion of goodness to be consumed.

Featuring an A-list cast (and Mamet's real-life wife par usual, Rebecca Pidgeon), Heist is a travelable but never over-exciting character piece that mish-mashes elements of past Mamet greats - The Spanish Prisoner, House of Games - to an intoxicating additive of clear ambition. Without such solid performances from the mega leads - Hackman in particular - one wonders whether Heist would have been better suited to a video audience.

Joe Moore (Hackman) is a master-thief. He is so cool at what he does that a colleague says of him: "He's so cool that when he goes to bed, sheep count him." After his mug gets caught on tape in his latest robbery, Moore decides it's time to retire; but minuscule sleazy fence, Bergman (De Vito) isn't going to let a legend retreat to his recliner just yet.

Seems Joe, Bobby (Delroy Lindo), Pincus (Ricky Jay) and Joe's much younger wife, Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon) owe Bergman something called 'The Swiss Job' and to make sure they end up going through with it, Bergman assigns his own self-satisfied associate, Jimmy Silk (Rockwell), to work with them.

With more twists and turns than a learn-to-drive school, Mamet's film could have been as incredible as his last few films. However, it's pace is so slow that even the most moving of Tortoise is no match for a competitive hare, and with so many similarly-plotted films - and better ones at that - Mamet's a little late to even consider entering such a pledge.

Still, with Hackman, De Vito and even Pidgeon (although she lacks the noir' look the film may have been calling for) it's a nice time passer but not the Crown Jewel Mamet hoped audiences would perceive it as.

3 out of 5

Heist
Australian release: Commences Thursday February 14th
Cast: Gene Hackman, Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pidgeon, Danny De Vito, Ricky Jay, Patti LuPone.
Director: David Mamet
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