The Italian Job; Venetian Risotto

The Italian Job (2003)

Director: F. Gary Gray

Had I seen this before: No

So, first of all, I really thought this movie was about stealing cars, which (spoiler) it is not. It is, however, very much about driving matching cars in exciting and coordinated ways. Now, I have seen the original version of this film starring Michael Caine and the only thing I remember about it is that Michael Caine is in it and he steals cars, the latter half of which I am now really starting to question. Is it possible that no Italian Job in history has ever been about car theft? I guess I'll never know.

Second of all, I was wholly prepared for this movie, like many popular movies that came out twenty years ago, to have aged in a way that would make me think "oh well, I probably would have liked this in 2003," but guess what? Aside from the expected shimmer of sexism on several of the jokes, I in fact liked this very much right here in 2023, which is a nice surprise. I've actually had such good luck with these first two heist entries that my spirits are dangerously high and I am considering attempting another half hour of Heat just to even things out a bit.

The opening credits are promising-- they're giving detailed plans, maps, teamwork, and exotic locales. Notes, measurements, distances, I truly cannot get enough planning. Did I get a look at one of those opening maps and excitedly think to myself "oh, that’s Italy!" for one second before remembering the title of the film? I certainly did, and I want you to keep that in mind lest you ever mistakenly come to believe that I am in any way smarter than any of the movies I watch. Especially when it comes to heists, I'm just along for the ride, baby! You might notice that this genre brings out a much softer side of my internal film critic, one who has a fairly high tolerance for not-great dialogue as long as it isn't actively terrible or distracting or annoying or overly self-serious—and this bad boy’s got tolerably not-great dialogue for daaaaaays. If anything, this streamlines the whole process, because there aren't too many effective emotional beats getting in the way of the planning and teamwork and matching cars.

We open on the titular Italian job (I personally already knew it would take place in Italy, due to my earlier map analysis) with the team in place. Mark Wahlberg plays Charlie Croker, whose job is to be handsome and keep a cool head and also mastermind cinematically elaborate European heists. And look, Wahlberg at this point comes with some baggage, both as a human and as an actor, but I was impressed with how low-key he kept it in this and it's hard to complain about this bit of casting. He was in fact handsome and cool-headed, I don't know what to say. ALSO HARD TO COMPLAIN ABOUT: Donald Sutherland as John Bridger, the mastermind mentor, tagging along for one last job which is how you know that he will definitely die in the process; Jason Statham as a driver named Handsome Rob; Seth Green as Lyle, the computer guy who does a very funny imitation of Handsome Rob in a later scene; Yasiin Bey aka Mos Def as Left Ear, the guy who blows things up; and Edward Norton as Steve, the guy who has a mustache and looks like he is only here out of contractual obligation.

The heist itself is both interesting and easy to follow and frankly I think more movies should open with someone blowing a rectangle out of two floors of a building so that a safe will drop neatly through into a Venetian canal where scuba-clad divers then crack it and extract $35 million worth of Balinese-dancer-stamped gold bricks and escape on motor boats while the Italian boat police and the protectors of said gold bricks chase them. Like, if we're worried about the state of the theatrical model of movie releases, I'm just saying, it's right there. The people want canal chases!

The people also want victory toasts in the snowy Dolemites while everyone congratulates themselves for being geniuses and not needing guns (I genuinely appreciated the not needing guns aspect) and prematurely gushes about what expensive item they will be purchasing with their cut. Everyone, that is, except mustachioed Steve, who has no original ideas of his own, and is also debating whether the deal that got him his breakout role in Primal Fear was worth being coerced into standing here right now.

Well, curse Steve's sudden but inevitable betrayal, because that's right--it's a double-cross. THE PEOPLE WANT A DOUBLE-CROSS. Steve and his Italian minions shoot Donald Sutherland and attempt to shoot everyone else, but by that point they're all underwater and sharing an oxygen tank and he can't see them so eventually when no one else surfaces he gives up. This part, to me, was pretty funny because when you're talking $35 million I would maybe wait a full oxygen tank's worth of time just to make sure that the group of people I just screwed over and left for dead were actually dead. Not Steve! Steve doesn't even want to be here! Do you know how heavy $35 million worth of gold bricks are? This whole thing is, frankly, a huge hassle for Steve.

Anyway, all of this happens before Charlize Theron as Stella Bridger, the deceased John Bridger's daughter, even gets involved. That's how hard this movie goes. The one-last-job heist is just a set-up for the revenge heist. I will not detail every step of the revenge heist plot, but Charlize gets to pretend to be a cable technician or something, which is hilarious, because...as much as the movie tries to lampshade it, the idea of Charlize Theron walking into your house because your television stopped working is so preposterous that no reasonable human would accept it. You would just greet her at the front door and shake your head in confusion until she left. Good thing Steve doesn't care about anything.

This movie has aged much better than I expected, but there are some 2003 signifiers: Charlize's thin eyebrows, hiding a spy cam in an American flag pin as though that's a normal accessory, Seth Green typing furiously into a Dell and claiming to have invented Napster, Ed Norton thinking he is too good for this good-ass movie.

Also, there is a helicopter vs. car chase that is honestly amazing. The helicopter swings into a parking garage like it's the freaking Predator or something. To me, that's cinema.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: [Left Ear, in response to hearing that the tiles in Steve's house are imported from a monastery] "Monastery for punk-ass creeps."

Is it under two hours: Yes

Did I understand the plan: I did not understand any of the specifics of the computer hacking aspect, but I also did not try to do so. Sometimes when they are explaining things in these movies my brain sort of zones out so that it will be more surprising when I watch it happen later. I did understand all the moving pieces and the general goal.

Risi e Bisi from Simply Recipes

Ugh, no one eats in heist movies. They're too busy heisting and swigging victory champagne. I guess this risotto is something that other, non-heist-related people might have been eating in Venice as several boats flew by them at alarming speeds.

Up next: I'm going out of town next week, definitely not to steal anything in a manner that involves a group of wisecracking characters with different skillsets and a lot of maps and diagrams, so I'm not sure yet. 

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three; Subway Sandwich

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Director: Joseph Sargent

Had I seen this before: No

As a New Year's treat to myself I have decided to embark on one of my favorite film genres, the heist movie. As a New Year's resolution-ish edification endeavor, I'm gong to try to cover at least a few examples of the genre that I have never seen. Now, you should know that my very first attempt at this was a failure, as I got about 31 minutes into the 170 minutes of Michael Mann's Heat before accepting that I have been correct all these years in assuming that the work of Michael Mann is powerfully, almost elementally, Not For Me. Because I do not want to feel like I wasted 31 minutes of my time, I am now going to waste even more of my time and also some of yours with a mini-review of the first half-hour of Heat. This is the energy I am taking into 2023, i.e., the same energy I have always had about everything.

At the time of this blog post, Heat is streaming on Hulu, which I mention only because I would genuinely appreciate any fellow Hulu subscribers searching for the movie Heat and then letting me know what film or films are listed for you under the "You May Also Like" tag. Because there is exactly one movie in that category when I personally pull up Heat and that is the 1995 Liv Tyler classic Empire Records. I have many, many questions about this, including 1) Am I the only one who sees this? 2) Is the single common link between these two films that they are 1995 movies about white people? 3) If I had gotten more than half an hour into Heat would it have eventually developed some unexpected Rex Manning energy? 4) Does Robert De Niro yell "Damn the man, save the Empire!" at any point? 5) Does Hulu's algorithm believe that Warren's foiled shoplifting attempt makes Empire Records a crime movie? I need answers.

Heat is a serious movie about serious men who know that both crime and anti-crime pursuits are serious and manly. They like to wear chunky gold rings and have sex with beautiful women but they do not like when beautiful women are annoyed with them for coming home very late and missing dinner. Beautiful women do not understand the seriousness of the serious jobs they have. They says things like "drop of a hat, these guys will rock 'n roll" about a brutal triple homicide and do not mean it to be remotely humorous, because things are not funny in the serious man crime game. Humor is for other people, possibly the beautiful women although I doubt it. I highly recommend this film if you like any of the above elements or if you enjoy the ecstatic sense of freedom that comes with abandoning a piece of art that is making you very weary. Alternatively, you can simply do what I did at the recommendation of my brother, which is watch Tom Hiddleston perform the diner scene to the mild amusement of Robert De Niro on the Graham Norton Show.

Now, lest you think I have a blanket aversion to manly men, let me go ahead and introduce you to one tall, rumpled drink of water named Walter Matthau, aka NYC transit cop Lt. Garber. Garber has a brightly colored plaid shirt, the yellowest necktie on God's green earth, a boring job, and borderline-worthless colleagues. The subway train leaving Pelham Station at 1:23 is there for the taking. It's the 1970s, baby! And it's dirtbags all the way down. Everyone involved on both sides of this crime is a little schlubby in the best, most multiple-shades-of-brown sort of way. The hottest person in this movie is Hector Elizando, maybe tied with the guy who played Wilson on Home Improvement. You need some more guys? How about Jerry Stiller as a transit employee who truly does not care about doing his job in any respect? Or maybe I can interest you in Martin Balsam, best known to me as the detective from Psycho, sneezing his way through this movie as one of the hostage-takers? Or the lead hostage-taker, Mr. Robert Shaw, lending the perfect amount of calm British psychopathy to the proceedings? That enough masculinity for ya? There's even plenty of sexism and some truly unfortunate hard-r racism in the mix here--it's just that the 99% of the movie surrounding those elements is extremely well-constructed and fun.

The first ten minutes or so of the film gives us our entire setup in a satisfyingly economical way, not to mention some banging 70s horns. We see a man in a hat, glasses, a mustache, and a trench coat board a subway train--is he suspicious or is it just the 1970s? But then we see an identically outfitted man board, then another--there are, in total, four men in glasses and mustaches and hats and coats and you know what? They look great. What a team. One of them is sneezing a lot. I think this guy's cold really resonated with me because here in Austin we are currently in hell cedar fever season. As this is happening, we also see that one of the train conductors is new at the job, as evidenced by the fact that he is walking through all the steps he needs to do and saying them out loud to the guy training him. We also see the diverse group of soon-to-be-kidnapped passengers boarding the train. At this point did I realize that my beloved Speed contains a lot of Pelham DNA? Oh, you bet I did.

We are also being introduced to Lt. Garber at this time--he's been tasked with giving a tour of the transit police operation to a group of Japanese executives from the Tokyo metro, which is both an amusing, effective bit of exposition and also the source of most of the movie's racism, so....uh, mixed bag there. The transit office is not exactly a bustling and efficient hive of activity--the general vibe of the entire building is "eh, whaddya want" in a New York accent. The degree to which absolutely no one here is prepared to or has any interest in dealing with any sort of crisis is outstanding.

But also, you know, bad, because a crisis they soon have--four bespectacled gentlemen have taken a subway car hostage and are demanding one meeeellion dollars within the hour or they will start killing one hostage per minute. As things progress, two mysteries develop: how do the bad guys plan to get away and who is the plainclothes undercover officer amongst the passengers? Meanwhile, the not-very-beloved mayor is sick in bed with the flu (sick to the point that we see a nurse taking his temperature...not orally) and just wants to be left alone to watch The Newlywed Game.

This movie is so much funnier than I expected, one of the villains goes out in a way that I have absolutely never seen in any other film, Robert Shaw's steely British pronunciation of "Left-tenant" is wonderful, the final shot of the film is a gem, and Matthau just absolutely rules in this. He's slumping, he's skulking, he's mumbling, he's frustrated, he's explaining how subway trains work to me by saying things like "there's a little gizmo known as a dead man's feature." I watched this entire film in less than the time that it would have taken for me to finish Heat yet I could have listened to Walter Matthau explain little gizmos to me all day long.

Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Turn this thing around and burn rubber!"

Is it under two hours: Yes

Did I understand the plan: Yes, mostly, although I have to admit I actually dropped the ball slightly on what was going on with the little gizmo.

Copycat Subway Cold Cut Combo from Recipes.net

The only sustenance any of the passengers brought on board was a sneaky bottle of purse booze, so we gotta make do with a thematic sandwich.

Up next: A remake of a stylish 1960s movie that I believe is about cars and/or how attractive Charlize Theron is