Heist

I would never want to get in a situation where I’m trying to cheat David Mamet. He would catch me faster than a cat on cocaine would catch a mouse on morphine. He’s the king of the double cross. If you don’t believe me check out The Spanish Prisoner. Or House Of Games. Or this new one. Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) is trying to pull his last jewel robbery. He and his wife, Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon–Mamet’s wife) and crew, Bobby (Delroy Lindo) and Pinky (Mamet stalwart and master magician Ricky Jay) pull it off, but Joe gets burnt. He knows that if the cops look hard enough they’ll find him, so it’s time to retire. All he wants to do it head south in his boat that he built himself with his wife.

But his boss, Bergman (Danny DeVito) has other plans…of course. He has one last job for Joe and his crew. And he wants them to take his nephew, Jimmy (Sam Rockwell), with them. Unfortunately, Jimmy is not only an asshole, but he’s rash and stupid. He immediately fucks things up and causes the job to be over.

But Joe and his crew have different plans.

There have been a lot of heist movies in the past few years (The Thomas Crown Affair, Entrapment, The Score), but few of them with the brains of this one. Every character (with the obvious exception of Jimmy) is intelligent and I had no problem believing that they would be able to pull these jobs off. That’s not something that you can say for all of these movies. Then again, we’re talking about David Mamet here. He’s great at writing witty and intelligent dialogue. The problem is that it’s not always totally believable and, in the wrong hands, it can come off as kind of stilted. Hell, even in the right hands it can come off that way. Sometimes that works to its advantage (Spanish Prisoner), sometimes not (um, I guess State And Main, but I didn’t think that one was as bad or stilted as a lot of people did). Of course, it’s probably his direction. When he doesn’t direct his dialogue (Glengarry Glen Ross, Wag The Dog) it usually comes out perfectly. Really no fault of his own, though. He was trained in the theare and that’s the way a lot of theatre acting/writing is.

This time out, though, he’s found a crew of actors who can handle the dialogue and his direction. Even when they say things that are a little off from real life (“So be it”? Who says that?) it’s perfect for the way they’re playing their characters. When Jimmy tells Joe that he’ll be as quiet as “an ant pissing on cotton” you believe that this guy would come up with a line that weird. (Joe’s response, by the way, is “I don’t want you to be as quiet as an ant pissing on cotton. I want you to be as quiet as an ant not even thinking about pissing on cotton.”)

Speaking of Joe, this is totally Gene’s movie. He pushes Mamet’s words through his mouth with enough coolness and spit to make them stick to the slickest of Teflon. And everyone feeds off of his energy and put in great performances to support him. I can’t imagine a better cast for one of Mamet’s little double/triple/quadruple crosses. I am a little worried about Mamet’s view of the world, though. In his world, trust no one. Even people you’ve known and worked with for years can turn on you in a second. That’s paranoia at its finest. But I guess that’s why we love Dave so much. He shows us the shit so that when it doesn’t happen we’re pleasantly surprised.

And, just so you know, he pretty much wrote that line, too.

If you like Mamet, you might as well buy this one. You’ll thank me for it.