All this may seem irrelevant because it's just a movie, and movies, as I know full well, offer illicit fantasies all the time. It's part of their basic appeal. But this is different because the moviemakers don't show any awareness of having crossed a line. I think it reflects generally how unaware moviemakers and audiences, and critics, too, are about narrative genres.
The plot of The Italian Job is a romance. In medieval chivalric romance, a direct ancestor of this and many, many other movie plots, a knight sets out on a quest. He's instructed by older tutelary figures, wizards who confer powers on him and hermits who explain his dreamlike ordeals for him as manifestations of universal meaning, and he's assisted by companion knights of valor second only to his. He sets out on his quest to aid or impress a virtuous lady, or he rescues a damsel in distress along the way who becomes his lady. In addition, he has comic servants, and he always has a faithful, spirited horse. On his adventures he is beset by inimical wizards as well as a world of hostile animals, most notably dragons, and knights who are his equal in valor and skill but on the opposite side, which means the side of evil, understood with full religious significance. He is also tempted by ladies who look fair but are foul inside, and resisting these temptations will often be the key to understanding the greater meaning of his quest.
The quest is always inherently good. That's the point: the knight's quest is an allegory of the Christian's proper navigation of life. In a work such as the 13th-century Quest of the Holy Grail (a great, compact place to learn many of the basics, and available online) a knight will conveniently find a hermit after an encounter who makes the underlying meaning of it explicit for him (and us). To anyone who has studied literary genres, this discussion will be rudimentary; what's surprising is how unfamiliar with even this much basic information people who regularly discuss movies are.
With The Italian Job it's a matter of filling in the blanks: Wahlberg is the white knight, Norton the black; Sutherland is both the wizard and the sage; the gold is the object of the quest; the noble steeds are now the Mini Coopers they use in L.A. to drive in tight, unexpected places; and living the rich life is what gives meaning to it all. Theron is at once the damsel and a female knight (not a modern phenomenon: they show up in the Aeneid, Ariosto's Orlando furioso, and The Faerie Queene), and Seth Green, Mos Def, and Jason Statham combine the comic function of servants with the skills of companion knights.
![Asphalt Jungle [VHS]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21WQT2N69TL._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
1 - peter
Great review, thanks a bunch. It's not everyday that I find a review of a movie that I agree with so much. I'm glad you pointed out the moral issues which heist movies have in abundance and also the predictability of the movie. I waited until the end of the movie only because I thought there would be a clever plot twist in the end...I thought maybe they would pull off the final heist just like the "italian job" and possibly have all the mini's as a distraction from where the gold really is. Or I thought that the 'damsel' would run away with the black knight and take the money with her. I was really looking for an interesting twist or plot change to make the rest of the film worth it, but I was horribly disappointed. Also, the line dialogue, especially between Norton, Wahlburg and Therone was especially terrible. The entire "date" scene was absolutely pathetic. In my mind, the *only* redeeming parts of the movie were the scene you mentioned with Statham and Green or the running "Napster" joke with the cameo from Shawn Fanning. Also, the second time I watched it (not by choice exactly..) I noticed that Spiderman makes an appearance in the movie. I took some screenshots and posted them on my webpage if you're interested: peterswift.org.
Anyhow, great review, I enjoyed it.
2 - jadester
this is exactly why i don't wish to see it. The original was cool - and no, it didn't really portray the criminals as being characters the viewer should be sympathetic to.