Once you get past the fact that The Italian Job isn’t really about the Italian job – a $35 million gold heist that takes place in Venice – so much as it’s about what happens after the Italian job, the most noticeable thing about this remake of the 1969 Michael Caine film is the uneven, mildly unsatisfying handling of the material by director F. Gary Gray. Sometimes tense and occasionally mildly funny, the film lurches along reasonably amiably, making few enemies among viewers, while winning over even fewer friends. There are little flashbacks that don’t work, characters that are insufficiently developed, and a clear sense that we didn’t just see this film 34 years earlier, but also many other times in different packaging over the intervening years.
A story of betrayal and revenge among thieves, it starts with the event described by the movie title, and quickly moves from there into a revenge scheme that fills out its 104-minute running time. Revenge is on the agenda because one of the gang members turns on the others, snatching the gold and leaving his partners for dead. Mark Wahlberg plays Charlie, the young gang leader; Edward Norton is Steve, perpetual second banana; Charlize Theron is Stella, straight-arrow daughter of safe cracker John Bridger (Donald Sutherland). Filling out the cast of gang members are Jason Statham, Seth Green and Mos Def, each playing your basic high-tech gang specialist – driver, computer hacker and explosives expert.
The Italian Job is about as unremarkable as a big budget special effects and car chase-filled movie can be. While it has exciting moments and some cute gimmicks – such as a trio of little Mini Cooper cars that the gang members use to escape their Los Angeles revenge heist – this is mostly by-the-numbers stuff. Part of the problem is that we don’t get to know the characters particularly well. Childhood flashbacks are cute and mildly funny, but really don’t give us a lot of insight into what motivates these people – especially Charlie and Steve – nemeses with all sorts of bad blood between them; we don’t really get into their conflict because we know neither enough to have much of a stake in it.
On paper, this is a strong cast, but the acting talent here doesn’t lift the film above ‘unremarkable.’ Norton and Statham are largely wasted, Theron just glowers a lot, and Wahlberg drones along without adding much to the film. Sutherland’s brief time onscreen is primarily devoted to his character smiling dumbly and repeatedly expressing love for Charlie.
There are some witty moments along the way, but not nearly enough for this to qualify as a comedy. And while there’s plenty of heist hijinx, the excitement in that department is of a distinctly familiar sort. Movies like 2001’s Heist and The Score covered similar territory and did it better (a David Mamet script for the former and the match-up of Norton and Robert DeNiro in the latter helped bring this about).
If you love heist films that devote three quarters of their running time to setting up the big job, then you might find enough to hold your interest here. This certainly isn’t an awful film. But Gray simply doesn’t do what he needed to do to give it a special spark. You’ve got to wonder – as I so often do with remakes – why they decided to try this one again. What did the filmmakers think they could do to make this one stand out? Whatever it was, they missed the mark here. The Italian Job is passable entertainment, but nothing more.
