Ray Pride

A man with a gun takes your wallet and runs into a nearby alley.

Not much of a story, you have to admit. A man with a terrible temper, unreliable collaborators, stylish clothes, and an underworld lifestyle dependent on an artfully crafted plan of pursuit and escape? You're getting there.

Heist movies are one of the rarest of genre styles to pull off. Which is why it's usually scary to hear the announcement of a remake like "The Italian Job," requisitioning the contours of a likable if convoluted 1969 English Michael Caine vehicle with some pretty terrific chase scenes.

But, against the odds, "The Italian Job" is that rare remake that does justice to the modest charms of its predecessor while working in a contemporary style. It also doesn't hurt that it's a remake of an imperfect movie. Director F. Gary Gray is onto something much like Doug Liman was with "The Bourne Identity": instead of exuding the callous cool of 1990s hits, the characters are sincere short of earnestness. It partakes of an earlier, more European sense of gangster cool.

Whether through characterization or casting, there are a handful of questions that make movies like this work. Are we sympathetic to who robs whom? Is justice served and how brutally? It's easy to make a bad heist film; while it's easy to admire the almost Martian weirdness of David Mamet's "House of Games," with almost no recognizable human psychology or behavior, his fascination with the bare mechanics of cons does him in, in a convoluted movie like "The Heist."

Michael Mann may be the director who pushes the idea of cool to almost pretentious levels. In his painfully stylish 1981 "Thief," the details of the robberies are told with an almost clinical precision while threats of obscene violence against a family make us root for James Caan's bad guy. In his epic 1995 "Heat," which Sight & Sound editor Nick James has memorably called a "slippery behemoth," Mann again uses the heist as a backdrop for an examination of gangland ethics, threatened masculinity and the city at night. But for a larger audience, "The Italian Job" will be the summer's unexpected lark, as concerned with the fun of the faces and the lure of the game as the history of genre. How pretentious could you get with the director of "Set It Off" and a cast that includes Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Seth Green, Jason Statham and Mos Def? Edward Norton, reportedly cast to redeem his contract with Paramount for his debut, "Primal Fear," is good, but less-than-fresh as a twisty bad guy like a couple he's played before. Gray, unlike Jonathan Demme and his Wahlberg-starring "The Truth about Charlie" (another caper remake), understands what makes that admittedly limited actor attractive and appealing, and uses his combination of ugly-prettiness, naiveté and street wariness to useful effect

As shot by Wally Pfister, cinematographer of "Memento" and "Insomnia," Gray's direction makes "The Italian Job" a sleeker, slicker version of the lighter-than-air intrigues of "Ocean's Eleven." While the commercials and word-of-mouth will focus on chases with the newly reminted Mini Cooper cars, there's also homage to the greats of the genre, such as "The Asphalt Jungle" and "Rififi" and the work of Jean-Pierre Melville. Jules Dassin claims he didn't see John Huston's 1950 classic until after making "Rififi." Another director working in France, Jean-Pierre Melville, who idolized that film and its director, was scheduled to make "Rififi," and when Dassin made it, he went on to "Bob le flambeur," ("Bob the Gambler"), which covers similar ground, as well as his epic heist swan song, 1970's "The Red Circle." Melville said that "The Red Circle," which will be issued as a Criterion DVD in a few months, incorporates all nineteen facets of the heist film, a list which, unhelpfully, he took to the grave. But Gray's work, on the streets of L.A. and even inside its gleaming new subway tunnels, tick off a few basics that have worked for fifty years.

In a movie like "The Italian Job," honoring its cinematic forebears, charm and betrayal, cool places and cooler toys add layers to the game. But the elegance of the heist genre comes down to one sustained element. Process. A description of actions, more baroquely detailed than in the world of someone like the French minimalist Robert Bresson, say, yet a depiction of process that shows theft to be a job requiring intense cleverness and innovation. It's like making a mass audience movie: it's only work.

"The Italian Job" opens Friday.

(2003-05-28)

Also by Ray Pride

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(2003-05-21)

The Woo of art
French nouvelle noirist Jean-Pierre Melville's twelfth, and penultimate feature, the epic of gangster manners "The Red Circle" (Le cercle rouge) "presented" by John Woo, graces the Music Box this week.
(2003-05-21)

Spin control
In more that one interview with filmmakers, I've seen them describe their burgeoning DVD collections. Some, like the Hughes Brothers, need a dose of cinephilic Ritalin when they talk about how they assemble scrapbooks of frame-grabs of shots they esteem by other directors...
(2003-05-21)

Summer Film 2003
From "2 Fast 2 Furious" to "Whale Rider"
(2003-05-21)

Summer Film 2003
(2003-05-21)

Summer Film 2003
(2003-05-21)

Quibbles and bits
(2003-05-14)

Tip of the Week
(2003-05-07)

Short Runs
(2003-05-07)

Members only
(2003-05-07)

Innocence unprotected
(2003-05-07)

Tip of the Week
(2003-04-30)

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