It’s not unusual for films to require their audience to suspend disbelief. Hollywood has asked us to consider Meg Ryan as a surgeon, Arnold Schwarzenegger a scientific genius and Ben Affleck as an intelligent life form.
Perhaps even more common than having to suspend disbelief is the requisite deferring of morality. All sorts of immoral activity is engaged in on the silver screen and we are asked to justify or excuse it based on all sorts of spurious logic.
One genre that excels at this manipulating of principle is the heist film. Whether it’s Michael Caine, Paul Newman, Sean Connery or George Clooney there’s something attractive about the charming conman. It seems that it is still good to be bad, as long as you’re not too bad. Featuring cons that are more complex than straight theft, there is considerable appeal in this style of film. The best heist movies have articulate scripts, flawed but likeable characters and enough plot twists to keep audiences guessing.
The Italian Job is a remake of the 1960s classic. But apart from a few common elements the two films are quite distinct.
Mark Wahlberg is Charlie Croker, the crook with a (slightly tarnished) heart of gold. He’s no Michael Caine but he’s funny, charming and loyal. A great planner and strategist, he possesses a quality that this film prizes about all else - imagination. Indeed Charlie is so affable you could imagine him as an idealistic English teacher or a volunteer at a local charity. Of course on Charlie’s jobs guns are never pulled, no one gets hurt.
He’s taken over the reins from veteran thief John Bridger (Donald Sutherland) who is joining him for one last job. Together with his talented team they steal US$35 million in gold bullion from a palazzo in Venice. It’s a tight plan that comes off without a hitch. It almost seems almost too good to be true: which, of course, it is. Among the team is a traitor who steals the entire fortune and leaves his former colleagues for dead.
The film now adds the less materialistic (but no less problematic) motive of vengeance to the plot as Charlie and co plan to resteal their gold and humiliate the traitor in the process.
It’s not a terribly original premise and at the film’s close there’s little to ponder - save the versatility of Mini Coopers. However the snappy dialogue and shrewd pacing make The Italian Job an enjoyable if forgettable experience.
The ensemble, cast led by Wahlberg (who goes someway towards redeeming himself after his woeful remake of Charade), work well together and almost succeed in persuading us that they’re not such a bad lot after all.
A slick and upbeat offering, The Italian Job comes on the heels of the grittier Confidence (a rip-off of The Sting) and the hilarious heist-gone-wrong flick, Welcome to Collinwood. Ironically of all three films it’s the frivolous comedy that is most critical of the life of crime.
In between the chase scenes and double-crossing there’s an interesting expression repeated throughout the film. It’s a phrase uttered by John Bridger. “I trust everyone. I just don’t trust the devil inside them”. The comment seems to suggest that everyone is susceptible to corruption and wickedness but also capable of doing good. It’s a worthy insight for such surface material.
However, how do we judge what’s good and what’s not from the machinations of men such as Bridger? The moral compass in this film is so broken that we’re left with a case-by-case approach to ethics. Our response to deception, theft and greed depends on whether they’re indulged in by the ‘good’ characters or the ‘bad’. Reality shows us that people are capable of both good and evil; our judgment can’t be based on the doer but rather the action itself.
