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Review:

The Italian Job (2003)

Score: 7/10

Director: F. Gary Gray

Stars: Charlize Theron, Donald Sutherland, Mark Wahlberg, Edward Norton, Jason Statham , Seth Green, Yasiin Bey.

Synopsis: Charlie Croker, a longtime thief and conman is on one last mission before he permanently retires. He and his team are betrayed by someone they trusted and they set out for revenge.

Review: After a successful mission, Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg ) recruits his old friend John Bridger (Donald Sutherland ) back into the world of thievery to assist him in one last gold heist that will give himself and his whole team enough money to retired for the rest of their lives. While on the mission they are betrayed by one of their team mates named Steve (Edward Norton ). One of their team members die due to Steve’s betrayal and the whole team devise an elaborate plan to steal back the money that was stolen from them and exact revenge for the death of their fallen team member. While planning their revenge mission, Charlie asks Stella Bridger (Charlize Theron ), the daughter of John to join as a safe cracker. She agrees and the whole team sets off on their quest.

So we have another film with Charlize Theron, cars, and Jason Statham in an action movie, gee, where have I seen that before? Just like the film The Fate of the Furious (2017), we have the same formula and the same director, F. Gary Gray (weird name). Both of Charlize Theron’s Characters are doing something generally nefarious and breaking into security systems of some sort as their main skill set. For Charlize Theron’s character here in this film, she is a safe technician and in the Fate of the Furious she is a Blackhat hacker. She has to be the most attractive safe technician and hacker I have ever seen, thanks Hollywood!

The over use of very unrealistic computer hacking to control the flow of car traffic seems to be one of director F. Gary Gray’s signatures. Like the Bruce Willis movie Live Free or Die Hard (2007) directed by Len Wiseman of the Underworld films, Hollywood seems to be in love with this idea. Criminal (2016) with Gal Gadot is another example. Like ROGUE ONE (2016) and Entrapment (1999) with Catherin Zeta Jones, we have another heist film where we the audience can’t wait to see how the heist is done and what the characters are going to do with their money. It seems like people who hate their real life jobs low paying jobs would love these films.

The cinematography is well done. The lighting, color, set dressing, wardrobe, and backgrounds work well. The film looks dated. Unless you’re watching some sort of remastered version ( if one even exists), the movie has a resolution that tends to bleed the color out a bit and make some scenes look a little fuzzy. It is what it is, an old movie. These films are done to death but it’s always fun to see how the heists are accomplished. For me, some of the best things about these films is how fast the characters are established and their unique personalities. We are usually introduced to the characters by watching them in action and learn more about them afterwards ( Show don’t tell ) unlike films such as Jupiter Ascending (2015) with Mila Kunis that seems to think that the audience is so stupid that we can’t tell what the hell is going by watching the film. So the use of narration is used to inform the audience of what is happening. As for this film, this movie is slightly above average and worth a watch if you’re bored.

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