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The Italian Job - 5/30/03 - PG-13 - 104m
Mark
Wahlberg - Charlie Croker
Charlize Theron - Stella Bridger
Edward Norton - Steve Frezelli
Director: F. Gary Gary
Written by: Donna & Wayne Powers
JEF
This movie was good for what it was meant to be. Because of that
I’m being generous and giving it a yellow light. It’s just
a plain old action movie with some guns, and lots of car chases. The cast
was well put together except for maybe one.
Storyline: Based on a 1969 remake of a Michael Cain movie,
Donald Sutherland played the role of John Bridger, who is an elderly criminal
who’s skipped town on his parole officer for one last heist before
retiring. Since he’s sort of retired already, he’s given the
reins to Charlie Croker to mastermind this last heist. To steal a LARGE
amount of gold bars. After some double crossing by Steve Frezelli (Ed
Norton), who then steals the gold again, and leaves his fellow thieves
for dead. Then a year later, the surviving thieves re-group along with
the daughter of John Bridger, Stella Bridger (Charlize Theron), to try
and re-steal the gold back, and to take up revenge against Frezelli’s
double cross.
I would have put a spoiler warning on the above description of the movie,
but if you’ve seen the trailer preview for the movie, this is all
revealed. In fact that was one of my biggest complaints about this movie
is that the trailer gave away far too many of the key plot elements!
My reference to the car commercial was for the use of the “Mini
Cooper” cars in the movie. Originally the gang brings in Stella
(Charlize) on this crime caper, and she drives a Mini Cooper. Then, they
travel to Hollywood CA, and guess what, Not only is she still driving
the same Mini-Cooper (which she must have drove cross-country from Philadelphia?
Or she brought onto the plane as “carry-on”), but now the
whole gang has bought two more mini-coopers. Through out the movie these
cars play a pivotal role in the storyline.
The cast was put together well. Mark Wahlberg played the lead criminal
mastermind of Charlie. Wahlberg and Theron seemed to have a genuine on
screen chemistry. Then add in some good supporting roles of “Left
Ear” (Mos Def), “Handsome Rob” (Jason Statham), and
perhaps my favorite in the movie “Lyle” or rather “Napster”
(Seth Green). Seth’s character was the sort of comic relief character
and it worked well. I wouldn’t mind seeing a spin-off movie of his
character and the storyline that he supposedly went to college with Shawn
Fanning the “founder” of Napster, and that Shawn stole the
idea from him while he was napping! Too funny.
The one character that didn’t quite seem to fit was Ed Norton. I
couldn’t really picture his level of talent playing this type of
character. Granted, he did a good job, but it just seemed a bit forced.
I just looked up this movie on IMDB, and checked the “Trivia”
link, and it says that Ed Norton is a bit outspoken that he was under
contractual obligation to make this movie. Which after reading this explained
it for me.
The movie’s plot was fairly well thought out considering the fact
that it is an action movie. It moved along at a good pace, and the one-liners
were clever. For a decent summer Hollywood movie with a heavy dose of
car chases (even though they are tiny cars), give this movie a shot.
Jef
Here’s what Lyn thought…
The Italian Job
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