As soon as you see the ancient-looking black-and-white Warner Bros. logo at the beginning of Heist, you know you're gonna be kickin' it old school for a couple of hours.  It's a classic caper flick, like something you might have seen in the '50s, but I'm afraid its retro-feel story won't play well with modern audiences.  It almost seems like writer/director David Mamet has purposely set aside what could have been a thrilling tale (a la his Spanish Prisoner) in order to nail his razor-sharp verbal mechanisms.  And you know what?  That's just fine with me.  People who liked Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross will like this movie.  People who liked The Mummy Returns probably will not.

Heist marks Mamet's return to the seedy criminal underworld of the confidence game after temporary departures via the Hollywood satire State and Main and the G-rated The Winslow Boy.  Recent Offensive Driver of the Month winner Gene Hackman (Heartbreakers) plays Joe Moore, an aging lifelong criminal who wants nothing more than to sail to New Zealand with his wife and cohort, Fran (Mrs. Mamet, Rebecca Pidgeon).  Joe's last job, which we see as Heist opens, doesn't go exactly as planned, despite deliciously intricate planning, and in the process, his mug gets captured on a security camera that leads to an impenetrable cache of video-recording equipment.  "I'm burnt," a dejected Joe mumbles.  "I got my picture took."

Before Joe and Fran can hop on their boat, they're contacted by a fence named Bergman (Danny DeVito, What's the Worst That Could Happen?), who is able to blackmail them into performing one last job for him.  The score has a huge payoff, but, of course, it's extremely risky and, to make things more interesting, Joe is told he must add Bergman's arrogant nephew Jimmy (Sam Rockwell, Charlie's Angels) to his crew, which also includes Bobby (Delroy Lindo, The Last Castle) and Pinky (Mamet regular Ricky Jay).  Joe reluctantly agrees to take a shot at the heist, which involves a bunch of gold and a Swiss airliner.  Like the film's tagline says, "It isn't love that makes the world go 'round" - it's gold.

Anyone familiar with Mamet won't be surprised to learn there's a whole lot of conning and duping going on here.  Heist is full of the wonderfully catchy terms you expect to find in one of Mamet's crime thrillers, like when characters nonchalantly throw around expressions like "the Meet," "the Thing," "the Job" and "the Lame."  And there are plenty of great lines, like when Joe refers to something as being "cuter than a pail of kittens," or having someone describe his as "so cool, when he goes to sleep, the sheep count him."

Heist sounds remarkably similar to The Score, which was released just four months ago.  Both films featured an aging criminal (Robert DeNiro) who wants to retire but is pulled back into one last lucrative caper by his portly fence (Marlon Brando), who insists the veteran villain work with a brash youngster (Ed Norton).  Things go wrong, there's a lot of backstabbing and double-crossing and, strangest of all, both movies were shot in Montreal. While both films feature terrific performances and twisty-turny plots, Heist's incredible dialogue make it a much more enjoyable cinematic experience.

1:47 –

for language and some violence