Heist 

Heist is superbly acted, well plotted, and contains some of the sharpest dialogue writer/director David Mamet has ever written, yet it feels borrowed, and is ultimately unfulfilling.  He’s covered this territory before, in the splendid House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner.  Heist is certainly as competent as those, and in some cases better (Rebecca Pidgeon has come a long way, that’s for sure), but due to the familiarity of the material, it is unable to surprise.  It’s good, but unoriginal.

The story starts with criminal mastermind Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) pulling a daring morning robbery of a jewelry store with help from his crew Bobby (Delroy Lindo, who needs to work more), Pinky (Mamet regular Ricky Jay) and wife Fran (Mamet’s wife and therefore regular Rebecca Pidgeon).  The problem is, the man who set up the deal, Bergman (a deliciously sleazy Danny DeVito) is holding Joe’s piece of the jewel heist hostage until Joe finishes another, much more complicated job, involving Swiss gold.  Not only that, Bergman insists that his nephew Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell) come along on the job.  Joe’s livid; he’s old, and was hoping to take his boat and sail away after the jewel heist.  Now, not only does he have to do One Last Job, he has to babysit a greenhorn he doesn’t know and therefore doesn’t trust.

What’s fun about Heist is watching the setup.  The Spanish Prisoner showed the point of view of the mark, the sucker who’s getting conned.  Heist shows the plans behind the con, and the detail is extraordinary, with seemingly innocuous comments and encounters paying dividends days later.  It also helps that the group executing the con are master thespians like Hackman and Lindo, and even then Ricky Jay damn near steals the movie from them.  When talking about Hackman to Rockwell, Jay says “My motherfucker is so cool, when he goes to sleep, sheep count him.”  Sam Rockwell, meanwhile, is getting a little too good at playing the weasel.  If he doesn’t watch it, he’s going to become the Cary Elwes of the ‘00s, which means he’ll get lots of work, but at a huge cost.

And yet, despite all the movie has going for it, Heist is unable to shake that feeling of the familiar.  When a double cross takes place, only to be followed by triple and quadruple crosses, it is only natural to assume that another cross is around the corner.  The success of these movies lies in their ability to deceive the audience, and when the audience no longer feels fooled, the final payoff and overall impression of the movie is diminished.

Still, for those who have not seen either of Mamet’s previous crime movies, Heist is worth the trip (though House of Games is still his best work).  Mamet junkies, however, will dig the dialogue and acting, but will likely find the overall experience lacking.