The Italian Job
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Movie Reviews of The Italian Job
Movie Review: A classic, but...
Summary: 3 Stars
I love this movie, I had it on DVD and I got it on HD DVD recently. My only gripe is the quality of the video transfer. There is a lot of graining and artifact noise, especially on dark scenes. The blacks on the DVD version look better than the HD DVD version's blacks...Movie Review: Great Movie, Terrible Video Quality
Summary: 2 Stars
Regular DVD in upscale player is better than Blu-ray. For some reason there are a significant amount of artifacts to the point of a distracting line in mid-screen. If you haven't trashed your regular/upscale DVD player, then buy the regular DVD and save some money. Don't get me wrong, the movie itself is fantastic...just the quality of its current Blu-ray version is sub-par. I'd return it, if I could. Movie Review: Good Cast-Good Movie, BRING ON THE SEQUEL!
Summary: 4 Stars
The Italian Job brings to the screen the story of a group of thieves bent on revenge on one of their own who betrayed them by murdering their leader and running off with the gold.
Mark Wahlberg, Donald Sunderland, Edward Norton, Charlize Theron, Seth Green, and the rest of this AMAZING cast, have outdone themselves with their performances, which are commendable to say the least. All the actors, without exceptions, give it their 100% and it really shows! Very well written and very well presented, the movie is without a doubt guaranteed to provide more than just a few thrills, not to mention a few laughs.
The setting, the plot, the dialogues, the humor, and the music are all wonderful!
In short, The Italian Job is a movie definitely worth watching and one to seriously consider adding to your movie collection!
Movie Review: The Italian Review
Summary: 4 Stars
I live right around the corner from a Mini Coop dealership and I'm an Italian-American, so I thought it fitting that I finally rented this movie. It's a remake of the 1969 original starring Michael Caine. Whereas that film took place in Italy, the remake stays there only for the introduction and then swiftly moves to California.
I love heist films. Like Ocean's Eleven or Heat, it's all about the cast. You can see a pattern in the characters:
THE WHEELMAN: This is the guy who mans the getaway vehicle, be it helicopter, jet, or car. Handsome Rob (Jason Statham, my favorite action hero) plays a decidedly scrappy, suave wheelman. This also happens to be almost the exact character from The Transporter. Hopefully, Statham will move beyond this type of character, but it's a testament to action tropes that he can actually be typecast as "the wheelman."
THE TECH: This guy is almost always a nerd and usually the comic relief. Lyle (Seth Green) nails this role and actually steals the show with his jokes. One ad-libbed sequence of Lyle mocking Handsome Rob is the funniest part of the movie. Of course, the challenge with this sort of character is that he needs to be able to pull off seemingly magical feats of technological wizardry without overshadowing the expertise involved. When Lyle manages to take control of the entire traffic system, you really have to wonder if he couldn't be better off striking out on his own. He's almost too good for the movie.
THE DEMOLITIONIST: The demolitionist's job is to blow things up. Sometimes he's a homicidal maniac, other times he's cool and collected. Left Ear (Mos Def) is a cool customer. And he doesn't like dogs. He gives Lyle competition for the funniest line in the movie:
Left Ear: This dude got dogs. I don't do dogs... I had a real bad experience, man.
Charlie Croker: What happened?
Left Ear: I had. A bad. Experience.
THE OLD MAN: You've seen this guy before. He's probably the former leader of the group. He's seen too much, been around the block too many times, and he knows his days are numbered. He just wants one last, big heist so he can retire forever. He almost always dies in the film. That pretty much sums up John Bridger (Donald Sutherland).
THE HOT CHICK: A recent invention, the hot chick's purpose is to keep men interested. She can have a variety of roles (tech, wheel-err-woman, demolitionist). Sometimes she has her own unique set of skills as safecracker. That's John's daughter, Stella (Charlize Theron), who competes admirably in the sea of testosterone.
THE LEADER: Handsome, smart, a safecracker himself, this guy is the one who pulls off a sneaky job right under the bad guys' noses. Unfortunately, Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg) is more narrator than anything else. He seems to have very little to do, and that's a shame, because Wahlberg's talented enough to do much more.
The villain is Steve (Edward Norton) a thief turned bad. He knows all of our protagonists' tricks, so he knows how to counter them. And since he stole the gold from the original Italian Job, he's the perfect foil. Norton plays him with just the right amount of shifty-eyed sleaze.
The Italian Job has lots of cool car chases, lots of near misses, and a lot of twists and turns (literally and figuratively) that make it a brisk, entertaining movie. You get quickly caught up in the machinations of the characters, which allows the film to get away with a lot of unbelievable nonsense. But who cares? From the funky flashbacks to the quippy asides, it's clear that Italian Job doesn't take itself too seriously.
Although it's more Job than Italian, the Italian Job is still a fun ride.
Movie Review: Italian Job - Blu-Ray, Great Movie, poor quality video
Summary: 1 Stars
I recently rented this movie from Netflix and I'm glad I didn't buy it due to the poor video quality. The picture is grainy at 1080P like others described especially at low light levels. When you spend the money upgrading to Blu-Ray, there is a certain expectation that the quality will be substantially better, and in this case it is awful. A pity since this is a great movie. Paramount, shame on you.