November
9, 2001 | Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) is a professional thief, and
he has been very good at his work for a very long time. He prides himself
on preparing for every contingency -- "I wouldn't clear my throat
without a back-up plan," he says, not bragging but merely informing
-- and he maintains a resolutely unflappable attitude while conducting
his risky business. He is such a cool customer, an associate marvels,
that "when he goes to bed, sheep count him." But at the start
of Heist, in the middle of the intricately planned and boldly
executed robbery of a jewelry store, things start to go bad for the
master criminal.
While
scooping up sackfuls of the shiny merchandise, Joe realizes, too late,
that he's being recorded on a security-camera tape. He finishes the
job, of course, but he assumes his career is finished as well. So he
figures that it's finally time to bid adieu to his long-time partners,
Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo) and Pinky Pincus (Ricky Jay), and retire
far way in some tropical paradise -- or New Zealand, maybe -- with Fran
(Rebecca Pidgeon), his much-younger wife.
But
Bergman (Danny DeVito), Joe's fence, a sleazy little brute who employs
ample muscle to enforce his whim of iron, has other ideas. Specifically,
he wants Joe and his crew to pull off -- are you ready for this? are
you sitting down? -- one last, big heist.
To
make sure Joe does "the Swiss job," as it's ominously described
throughout the film's first half, Bergman withholds payment for the
jewelry store robbery. And to make sure Joe doesn't try anything clever
- well, OK, anything more clever than usual -- the fence assigns his
ambitious nephew, Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell), to join Joe's crew and
generally keep an eye on things. Unfortunately, Jimmy isn't terribly
bright. Worse still, he is a terrible thief. Worst of all, he keeps
his eyes on Fran, to the exclusion of just about everything and everyone
else he should be watching much more carefully.
It's
a funny thing: Sometimes, you can go years without seeing something
so simple, yet so rare, as a no-frills, ice-cold, dead-serious caper
flick in the classic tradition. Within the space of just a few months,
however, we've been treated to two such retro delights. First there
was Frank Oz's The Score, an old-fashioned and uncommonly satisfying
crime story with all the seductive craftsmanship and sophisticated elegance
of a Tony Bennett standard or an Yves Saint Laurent original. Now we
have Heist, a hardboiled, razor-sharp neo-noir drama written
and directed with poker-faced cunning by David Mamet, the best Pulitzer
Prize-winning playwright who ever moonlighted as a moviemaker.
Breathing
fresh life into stock characters and parody-worthy conventions, Mamet
has concocted a plot that percolates with enough fake-outs, false clues,
double whammies and triple-crosses to flummox the cagey con artists
who prowled through two of his earlier films, House of Games
and The Spanish Prisoner. Just as important, he supplies his
world-class cast with reams of his trademark Mametian dialogue. The
argot is instantly recognizable -- profane-poetic non sequiturs, obscenity-spiked
outbursts employed as offensive weapons, innocuous phrases repeated
until they have the potency of hammer blows -- and altogether appropriate
for the artfully stylized hard cases working for, with and against each
other here.
I
can't identify who's talking, but here's one of my favorite exchanges:
"Don't you want to hear my last words?" "I just did."
Here's another: "Nobody lives forever, eh?" "Frank Sinatra
gave it a shot." Quentin Tarantino, read it and weep.
Hackman
plays Joe as a wary, world-weary pro who always has an exit route stored
in the back of his brain, and who never looks surprised -- only, at worst,
mildly annoyed or slightly disappointed -- whenever he's betrayed by
a partner in crime. Even if you don't know anything about Hackman's
recent, real-life, widely reported fisticuffs in the wake of a Sunset
Boulevard traffic mishap, you won't have any trouble accepting the aging
but agile fellow he portrays as a harder-than-nails tough guy.
But
Hackman does more than just crack wise and crack heads. Here and there,
he subtly suggests that Joe is much colder and craftier than even his
intimates could possibly imagine. The pay-off comes in a final scene
that is all the most wrenching because Mamet, slyly upending our expectations,
doesn't try to improve on perfection with one last plot twist.
Lindo
exudes a kind of baleful melancholy while portraying Bobby as an invaluable
ally -- ferociously lethal in fights, briskly efficient on the job, good
company during down time -- while DeVito offers a not-so-lovable variation
of his familiar bantamweight-sleazeball persona. As Bergman, he gets
his usual quota of laughs. But he also remains seriously menacing by
hard-selling the character's low cunning and blustering amorality. "Everybody
needs money," he snaps at Joe. "That's why they call it money."
On paper, the line doesn't read like anything special. On screen, however,
DeVito makes it sound at once broadly comical and whip-crack brutal.
By
unfortunate contrast, Rockwell overplays the thick-headedness of his
character; as a result, it's never easy to believe Jimmy poses a genuine
threat to anyone other than himself.
Many
of the other supporting players - including Pidgeon, a.k.a. Mrs. David
Mamet, and Jay - are veteran members of what might be called Mamet's
private repertory company. They know the rules of the game, and they
play with practiced ease. Pidgeon is less archly affectless than usual,
though she remains appropriately ambiguous as a femme fatale.
A minor quibble, though: She and Hackman don't appear entirely comfortable
during displays of mutual affection. Indeed, early in Heist, I began
to suspect that, at some point, we'd discover that this woman who looks
young enough to be his daughter really is his daughter.
But,
no, Mamet has a much nastier twist than that in store for us. Good for
him. Better for us.