A Heist of the Wrong Kind
by Ed Owens

The only thing really stolen by Heist, David Mamet's latest by-the-numbers cat and mouse thriller, was the two hours spent watching it, a daring daylight robbery that leaves one feeling violated and with nowhere to turn. I'm willing to forgive the eight dollars spent on an evening ticket (as a Mamet character would likely say - and more than likely has - easy come, easy go), but the time lost is irretrievable.

The plot is standard fare by anyone's standards. Joe (Gene Hackman) is a "good" crook looking to break from the life and sail down south with gal pal Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon). A colleague, Mickey (Danny DeVito), essentially forces Joe and Co. into one last score, a nifty plan involving a Swiss plane and a lot of gold. While Joe has his trusted crew, Mickey insists on sending his nephew (Sam Rockwell) along to keep things honest. Of course, honesty is nowhere to be seen, and the result is a complex game of cross and double cross.

Unfortunately, the game isn't as complex as the film expects us to
believe. As soon as the primary characters are in place, the role of each in the traditional bait and switch narrative is set in stone, and Mamet makes no attempts to tweak the schematic. The expected twists and turns arrive right on schedule, with any genuine element of surprise having been checked at the door. All that's left is the potential pleasure of watching the wheels turn, but that disappears faster than the jewelry taken in the film's opening heist, largely due to a complete lack of anything even remotely resembling plausible narrative or character development. Watching the wheels turn isn't enough when some of the wheels are missing.

As a Mamet film, one would at least expect the dialogue to sing, and sing it does, albeit horribly off-key. Heist is a film enamored of its own dialogue, each line being delivered with such self-awareness that it virtually hangs there, waiting for the audience to appreciate it as much as Mamet apparently does. Several reviews have pointed out what they consider to be some of the better lines, but all have failed to mention that for each "great" line, there are at least five that fail miserably.

"Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the road crossed the chicken."

There is no mistaking the film's opinion of such lines, given that it
literally thrusts them at you with a bizarrely overstated sense of
self-worth ("See how clever I am?"). All of this would be more
acceptable if the film had any sense of fun about it, but Mamet and Co. take themselves far too seriously to mistake this for tongue-in-cheek. Blame has to go, in part, to the actors' delivery, most of which comes across as rehearsed recitation rather than casual conversation.

The worst offender is, as usual, Rebecca Pidgeon, who, it must be said, seems to have only one mode, regardless of the situation. Many of her lines are unintentionally funny, and her conversations with Sam Rockwell seem like refugees from a soap opera cutting room floor. But she is by no means alone. Even Hackman, who at least can be said to have some moments of clarity in the film, suffers from the same labored and exaggerated delivery problems. Such pronouncements might pass onstage, where such exaggerated gestures are almost necessary, but on film, they only contribute to the film's sense of removed mechanization, of something overly crafted rather than naturally emerging.

The film does have bright spots, all of which belong to Delroy Lindo. For one, he has the best line/story in the film, a brutally funny anecdote about an old colleague who kept a bible close to his heart. But even he can't escape the limits of the material. In the end, I suppose one would have to fault Mamet, whose lack of any innate sense of direction results in the failure of scenes so rife with inherent tension that one has to wonder if such failure is intentional.

The answer to such wondering is irrelevant, as even the intentional undermining of the film's dramatic possibilities would still not account for the film's failings. Mamet's return to form is just that, a return to the overly schematized twists and turns that will surprise only the most inexperienced of viewers. Perhaps Mamet should stop trying to direct...that would leave him more time to focus on writing, and leave his material in the hands of someone more capable of translating it to the screen.

At the very least, it would get rid of Rebecca Pidgeon.

©2001 Ed Owens
CineScene