A spectacular robbery in a not so spectacular film

Rating: Null/10 (3 June 2003)

With a promising opening scene of a great robbery, you would think this movie would have more potential like other robbery films such as The Score, which, ironically, also stars Edward Norton. However, as most other B rated movies, this movie falls short on many levels.
The Italian Job is a remake of the original The Italian Job (1969). It's about revenge over the death of John Bridger (Sutherland) after a $35 million heist. Charlie Croker (Wahlberg) leads his team of men and long with Bridger's daughter, they take a vengeance on Steve Frezelli (Norton) who stole the money from them in the opening scene.
The three mini-coopers seem to get a lot of attention in the movie (I wonder how much mini-cooper paid?). So much attention, in fact, that they had to show them from almost every angle for a good 3/4 of the movie. In fact, by the end of the movie, I myself was wanting one of the little powerful machines.
Actually, that's unfair to say because in the original, mini-coopers were also used. In any case, these cars swerve in and out of traffic during car chase scenes like no other. But even with these small, manueverable cars, they never make the action feel complete. When you go into an action movie, you expect action. Though action is delivered (during the robbery scenes), the action during car chase scenes never holds up. It's what you've seen in just about any other car chase scene ever, nothing spectacular.
There are a couple scenes though, which make you just laugh. Lyle(Seth Green) brings comedy to the screen and though the jokes are always on the same subject, they never get old. Norton, on the other hand, does not deliver. Not so surprising though, as he said in an interview that he did not look forward to making this movie.
The worst thing about this movie was the fact that it cut too many scenes short and made too many scenes long which should have been shorter. This was probably done so that the pacing would be steady throughout the movie, but it never makes the viewer feel satisfied.
6.5/10