Heist (2001)

It's hard to go wrong with a story about clever criminals who must worry not only about the authorities but about the treachery of other clever criminals. Master thief Joe (Hackman) decides to call it quits after a profitable jewel store robbery in which his unmasked face is caught on camera. Trouble is, he's already committed to another, bigger job–stealing a gold shipment from a Swiss freight plane–for his fence & paymaster Mickey (Devito). Mickey won't pay off for the jewel job until Joe does the "Swiss thing."I didn't know anything about David Mamet before I saw this film… now I know that he's got a penchant for characters with ulterior motives and slang-heavy dialog. Going into this film, I didn't expect anything but a(surprise surprise) heist flick. I got just that. Not just a heist flick, but a well-acted, nicely directed and quite entertaining one, at that. The plot is pretty good, and keeps your interest throughout. There are a fair bit of double-crosses throughout, and near the end, it does get somewhat tiresome. The acting is all top-notch. Not one performance was even slightly off. It's no surprise to see such high-quality acting from Hackman, Lindo and Rockwell, but I had not expected such excellent performances from DeVito and Jay. The writing is very good, but Mamet uses too many clichés and there's just a tad too much going on in the shadows, people conspiring against each other. The dialog tries oh so hard to be clever, and occasionally succeeds, but more often than not, it just comes off as pretentiousness, with all the slang, the attempts at being clever and the ridiculously high pace it sometimes sports. The cinematography is great, not one shot was poor or out of place.