37 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
37 lines
3.0 KiB
Plaintext
one never quite knows what one is going to get with a mamet film .
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his american buffalo is a set-bound piece that has very little plot .
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sometimes he will tell a story that really moves .
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heist is mamet doing his most entertaining work .
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unlike his the spanish prisoner , there are no lapses in credibility .
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heist is probably the best mamet thriller since house of games .
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it is the kind of plot with which you are never sure who will double-cross whom , and frequently it is mamet double-crossing the viewer .
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watching the film's team getting around security the viewer is frequently asking himself either " what the heck are they doing ? "
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or " why didn't anybody think of that before ? "
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appropriately enough heist opens with a very clever jewelry store job .
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it is so clever that one wonders if mamet really thinks up all these ideas himself or if he has help from professional magician and con expert ricky jay , now a regular actor in mamet films .
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this is a robbery that works like a well-oiled machine .
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there is just one problem and it is enough to get joe moore ( played by gene hackman ) filmed on a security camera .
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now joe has to get out of the business .
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it was coming time anyway .
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joe's team including bobby blane ( delroy lindo ) , fran moor ( rebecca pidgeon ) , and pinky pincus ( ricky jay ) is going to split up and go separate ways .
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but crime boss bergman ( danny devito ) is pulling the strings and he says that joe and his people have to manage one more robbery .
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and he has to take along a young kid , the short- fused jimmy silk ( sam rockwell ) .
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immediately it is obvious that there is more going on than meets the eye .
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much of what distinguishes heist is mamet's dialog .
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remarkably it serves a double purpose .
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the robbery team sounds at once very professional and at the same time it has mamet's special feel for dialog .
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hackman has lines like " everybody needs money .
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that's why they call it money . "
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mamet's timing is perfect in the direction but terrible in the production .
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the plot is coincidentally a lot like the plot of the recent the score , which is , in fact , a very similar story .
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both are good films , perhaps for some of the same reasons .
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but at least on a high level they are much the same story .
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the other problem with the timing of heist is that it involves airport security and clever ways to get around them .
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i saw the film at the toronto international film festival on september 12 , 2001 .
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that made the subject matter just a little too timely .
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my understanding is that the release will be delayed .
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my biggest problem with the film is that rebecca pidgeon's acting at times seems very poor .
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it is some kind of mamet trademark i do not understand to have women talk without inflection , as if they are just reading the words for the first time .
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it is an irritation and distracts us from what is otherwise a very good thriller .
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it is one i rate an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale .
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