Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I know there’s a lot of love out there for the original ITALIAN JOB. Hell, I love it. It’s one of those great, clever caper films that has aged very well. Still, I plan to go into this one with an open mind and just treat it as a new film. With the sheer volume of remakes that we’re being confronted with as filmgoers these days, moral indignation over each and every remake seems to be too exhausting to maintain.
Let’s see what today’s spy thought, though:
Never one to turn down a free Marky Mark remake, I got to go to a test screening of ‘The Italian Job’ last night in Times Square. Being British, it’s the law in my country to be a fan of the original and I thought I’d go along with an open mind and see how well Hollywood had butchered another Michael Caine classic.
First off, the title is false advertising - it really should be called “The We Couldn’t Be Bothered To Leave LA Job’. The movie has little to do with its namesake apart from two character names and the red, white and blue Minis (new ones, mind). Of course this begs the question why do a remake at all if you’re going to discard the story, plot, setting and most importantly, the tone of the original? Seems a bit self-defeating.
The story opens in Venice where the team of thieves (Mos Def – demolition, Jason Statham – getaway driver, Seth Green – annoying bastard) are lead successfully on a robbery by Mark Wahlberg, only to be double-crossed by Edward Norton. (They should have spotted he was a villain by his rather off-putting moustache.) He kills Donald Sutherland and makes off with $35 million in gold. Jump to one year later and Sutherland’s safe-cracking daughter (a luscious Charlize Theron) is convinced to help Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch steal the gold back from Norton in revenge. He gets wind of their plan and wisely decides to move the gold to Mexico, resulting in a mediocre car chase above and below LA.
There’s little more to it than that, other than a handful of eyebrow-raising moments, it plays rather flat and uninspired. Wahlberg restricts his role so drastically he’s barely present, but the others play it a little more entertaining (i.e. alive). Seth Green’s character has a running joke that he invented Napster, which just obscure. I can’t imagine how dated that’s going to seem a few years from now. Charlize should win some sort of award for being that pretty, but unfortunately she doesn’t get her kit off in this one.
I guess the big question is do the car chases hold up? Have they improved on the inventiveness and audacity of the original? Are you going to see stunts you’ve never seen before? Are the Mini’s characters in themselves as they dash nimbly around the city, cheekily breaking every traffic law ever invented? Of course not. Hopeless.
So a remake that’s not a remake, an Italian Job that’s not in Italy. It doesn’t get much stranger than that. How this got made is anyone’s guess, maybe it would be justified if it was a work of passion to bring the classic 1969 film to new audience, but it’s certainly not. Really uninspired and creatively bankrupt. Michael Caine is probably spinning in his glasses. Avoid this, watch the original.
Crashlander
P.S. I hear they’re remaking Alfie with Topher Grace, only he’s called Alan and he’s a hitman.
Okay... but did you like it?
I’m hoping to get a peek at this one m’self soon, so we’ll see if I have any more fun with it than he did. Thanks for the review, man.
"Moriarty" out.
