Great verbiage aside, the red herrings and manipulations boil down to too much of a good thing.
Heist (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:125
Fresh:82
Rotten:43
Average Rating:6.2/10
Consensus: Heist didn't cover any new ground, but the cast and Mamet's expertise with witty banter make it worthwhile.
Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Written and directed by David Mamet, HEIST is a crime thriller that follows aging master thief Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) as he plans one last robbery before literally sailing off into the sunset.... Written and directed by David Mamet, HEIST is a crime thriller that follows aging master thief Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) as he plans one last robbery before literally sailing off into the sunset. What seems like the perfect heist gets complicated, however, when Joe's "business" partner, Bergman (Danny DeVito), insists that his shifty nephew, Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell), join the crew--consisting of Joe's young wife, Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon), and longtime associates Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo) and Don "Pinky" Pincus (Ricky Jay). A tense battle of wits and wills ensues, leading to plenty of twists and turns before the grand finale. HEIST works wonderfully as a fast-paced, slight-of-hand caper flick. By focusing on dialogue over violence, Mamet allows his excellent script and remarkable cast to shine. Hackman (who seems incapable of giving a bad performance) and Lindo are particularly outstanding and carry the film as deftly as their characters plot their crime. Although the one-last-robbery tale has been told hundreds of times before, it's rarely been told better than this. [More]
Starring: Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, Ricky Jay
Starring: Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, Ricky Jay, Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pidgeon, Patti LuPone
Director: David Mamet
Director: David Mamet
Screenwriter: David Mamet
Producer: Art Linson, Andrew Stevens, Elie Samaha
Studio: Warner Bros.
Reviews for Heist
A self-indulgent exercise in senseless word-love and misguided nepotism.
Works in spite of itself, due to the fantastic cast and Mamet's crackling dialogue.
It's consistently fun, occasionally funny, and will have viewers on the edges of their seats on more than one occasion.
it is a pleasure to be captivated by Mamet, the master of tired, tough, talk.
The convoluted caper at the heart of Heist is a sure sign that writer/director David Mamet has been trying way too hard.
The cast is brilliant, the plotting ingenious, the dialogue incendiary.
Heist not only reminds us that there's a little larceny in all of us, but reminds us as well how much fun it can be to commune with our inner thief.
While staccato dialogue and edgy confrontations have always been the wordsmith's forte, the precision-tooled mechanics of an elaborate crime caper have not, and the physical direction here could use some muscle.
Featuring charming criminal masterminds going up against more venal, not to mention foolish, operators, pulling off all manner of delightful double crosses along the way.
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