Raises the bar on the Gold standard

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2003)

"The Italian Job" is carried out by real pros, a delight from beginning to end, with superlative casting, clever dialogue and one beautifully-directed scene after the other.
The film, a re-tooling of the earlier Michael Caine movie of the same name, has the simplest of plots: get the gold, lose the gold, get the gold back. It's the way it's done that elevates this one: all the characters are well-written, it's got the perfect amount of tongue-in-cheekedness (is that a word?!), the style AND the substance are there in equal part, and it's supremely easy on the eyes to boot.
Particularly outstanding: Charlize Theron (dazzlingly gorgeous as always, with a well-played touch of vulnerability underneath her character's more-than-capable exterior), Donald Sutherland (elegant and cool in his brief appearance), Seth Green (as the self-titled "real" Napster, who gets to play God with the Hollywood traffic grids in his very own "matrix"), and Mark Wahlberg (in a perfectly nuanced performance, controlled and clearly on top of his game). And oh yeah, Edward Norton as the slime-bucket who gets his just desserts is sufficiently and sublimely sleazy. (Think he's been taking Dustin Hoffman lessons in his spare time.)
In the movie, "FINE" stands for "freaked-out, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional". . .but in the case of this review, it just stands for Fine.