Movie Details
Heist (2001)
Director-: : David Mamet
Cast-Gene HackmanRebecca PidgeonDanny DeVito
Movie type- Crime/Thriller ‧
Release date- 09 November
IMDB Rating-6.5
Languages- English, Arabic, and Spanish
Duration-1 Hour 41 Minutes
Trailer
Synopsis
Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) is a thief; not just any one, but the best in the industry. He does not work alone, for years he has been accompanied by a well-coordinated team of specialists: Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo), Pinky (Ricky Jay) and his wife Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon). The entire business is managed by the enterprising and cynical Bergman (Danny De Vito), who searches for appropriate goals and finances the entire venture. Unfortunately, during Joe’s last action, the security system filmed him at the crime scene. This becomes the direct reason for his withdrawal from the industry. Bergman, however, has other plans for him. By blackmailing Moore with the threat of non-payment of his share of the loot, he tries to force him to organize a heist on the transport of Swiss gold. Joe, forced by the situation, decides to discourage Bergman.
Mamet’s films are famous for their complicated, lacy plot, which can be quite difficult to follow even for more experienced viewers. This is also the case here. The director does not spare us mental gymnastics and does not allow us to take our eyes off the screen, because this would risk losing the thread of the film’s sophisticated plot. In Mamet’s earlier paintings, this technique, used equally often, caused the viewer to get up from the cinema chair, exhausted, but satisfied with the intellectual fun that the creator had given him. In the case of the Jump, it only ends in exhaustion. There are plenty of plot twists, exciting moments and surprises, but at some point I got the impression that the multiplication of plot twists only serves to impress the viewer, not to tell an interesting story. Each of the elements, if prepared, could serve as a model for any creator referring to the proud traditions of film noir .
So we have a bloody hero brilliantly played by Gene Hackman, we have a real femme fatale (Rebecca Pidgeon), a theme of loyalty and friendship, and of course the reason for all the fuss, which is the transport of gold. However, the problem begins when it comes to combining these perfectly prepared components into one coherent whole. And the whole thing, to put it briefly, causes boredom: intellectual fun stops engaging the viewer from the moment he stops distinguishing who outsmarted whom, when and how. The rather serious tone of Skoku also does not match the comedic, bordering on pastiche character of the main villain – Bergman (brilliantly played by Danny De Vito). It creates a visible (perhaps intentional) boundary between the serious world of thieves – professionals and the grotesque, slightly unreal world of gangsters – contractors. When there is a conflict between them, you know that at some point there will be victims. However, when they appear, we get the impression that they are as unreal as the perpetrators of the crime, they are simply unreliable.
The final trial in the film The Jump also leaves us somewhat unsatisfied, and the appearances created by Mamet for the purpose of surprise make us wait for everyone to get up and laugh at the excellent joke that the unfortunate viewer fell for. All this does little to serve the film’s coherence. At the end, I left a particular mistake (also highlighted by other reviewers), which was not supposed to happen in Mamet’s usually perfect scenarios. This concerns the previously mentioned thread of the video recording, which unmasks Joe Moore and becomes the reason for his departure from the profession. Mamet breaks Chekhov’s old rule here, which says that if a gun is hanging on the wall in the first act, it must inevitably go off in one of the next ones. The thing is that the video recording is silent and there is no intention of firing anything. This thread, yes, becomes the driving force behind the main character’s actions, acting as a mechanism providing a pretext for the development of the action, but it lacks an eye-catching finishing touch that could serve to further dramatize the course of events.
David Mamet is an erudite director, an expert on the human psyche and an excellent playwright. Skok fits perfectly into his previous directorial achievements, but there is one thing; this time, despite – or perhaps because of – the sophisticated structure, the film’s form has outgrown its content, which is the direct reason why it unfortunately does not live up to its outstanding genre predecessors – The Game House. Although this does not in any way change David Mamet’s position as one of the outstanding creators and intellectuals, it still remains intact, but it disappoints those who expect another film gem by a debunker and expert on the dark corners of the human soul, and that includes me.
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