There's also the comic mode of amoral romance, in movies like Ernst Lubitsch's Art Deco frolic Trouble in Paradise (1932), in which Miriam Hopkins gets so mad at her jewel thief lover when she thinks he's fallen for the rich widow they intend to rob she hollers, "I wouldn't fall for another man if he were the biggest crook on earth!" as she breaks into the woman's safe; or The Pink Panther (1964), in which the suave thieves amusingly set up the clumsy inspector to serve out their jail sentence; or the playfully sinister British classic Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which an arch, exquisitely poised young nobleman kills off the eight relations (all played by Alec Guinness) who stand between him and the dukedom he feels is his by right. (Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) combines the two types: the conversations among hitmen play like vaudeville and the violent action like cartoons.)
The dramatic pictures and the comedies both have an air of unreality (to which the comedies add frivolity and wit), which serves as license to our enjoyment, whether we're being made uneasy or being enticed, teased. We don't need movies to lecture us about morality. We don't even need a virtuous protagonist. All it takes is the stylistic control to let us know that Sunday school's out, we're on holiday. One of the virtues of irony is that it permits identification with characters whose actions we don't approve of, often ones who work as heroically for dubious, if not outright objectionable, ends as good guys work for noble ends. It has been, in fact, about the only way to get a reasonably complex protagonist in a dramatic American movie.
Maybe the people making The Italian Job got lost because the contest isn't between criminals and cops, but between former criminal accomplices. Morally it's a battle drawn in two shades of black. Such a formula requires an extra measure of sophistication, whereas the director F. Gary Gray appears to fall short of the minimum. Though the material is sporty, Gray directs as if we'll shed a tear that poor Sutherland didn't get to spend more time with his daughter, and cheer as the gang causes mayhem in Los Angeles in order to get that gold back. (The movie doesn't even bother with the usual salve to our conscience that the person from whom they stole it in Venice came by it illicitly, or was a bad person, or was insured.) "Touching" leads straight to "depraved": at the end Norton isn't just killed, we're informed he's going to be tortured to death. Yay for our side! (Will the DVD include footage of it?) Where I differ from Dan Quayle Republicans on this issue is that I don't think people get their morals from the movies or TV, so I know that something like The Italian Job can be morally despicable in an insignificant way.
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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.