Enjoyable but not as `fun' as I'd expected it to be

Rating: Null/10 (30 September 2003)

After a daring gold robbery by stealth and cunning in Venice, a group of criminals celebrate their job. However one of the group, Steve, turns on them, killing John and leaving the rest for dead. The rest survive and one year later they find Steve selling the gold in LA. They recruit John's daughter Stella, an expert safe cracker, in order to steal back his gold and thus get revenge.
While I was writing a review of the video game about a year ago I spotted that this remake was in production. I'll admit that my initial thoughts were `sweet Jesus' and `not everything should be remade', but I was still open to seeing it and, by now, those thoughts had subsided a bit. The film opens hesitantly and the early scenes with Charlie and John positively stutter. After the first job the film really picks up and gets enjoyable without every really letting rip. The downside of this is that it never really becomes a feel good spectacle in the same OTT way that the original was. Yes, some moments are funny and the final job is quite exciting and quite clever but it isn't `fun' in the way I'd hoped.
Some scenes are really weak and I'm sad to say they are most of the ones that rely on Wahlberg. His scenes (with Theron and Sutherland) are quite dry and he fails to captivate as a leading man. Thank God then, for a pretty good support cast. No, I don't mean Theron, although she is used for her looks quite well, but the male cast. The rest of the gang bring the laughs and the characters, they are not as emotionally important to the story as Charlie and are much better for it. Statham does good work and is cool and funny, Green is as good as you'd hope he'd be  although his Napster stuff gets a bit tired after a while. The highlight for me again was Mos Def  this is the second time in a few months he has been in a small support role but has lifted a film (Brown Sugar being the other). All three do good jobs round the edges and help support the very iffy Wahlberg.
I enjoyed Edward Norton even if he was clearly slumming it a little bit. I detected a bit of mischief in his eyes when his character is placed second after Charlie by John  ironic as Wahlberg was favoured to play Charlie over Norton who wanted the role!
The mini action is good as it doesn't use effects to a great effect  almost a good old fashioned car chase  but to say it compares to some of the other chases this summer is just silly. Overall this is an enjoyable film but is weak at it's core and suffers as a result. The film doesn't flow as freely as it should and it is only the enjoyable car chases and sterling work by the Mighty Mos et al, that lifts it to be better than the sum of it's parts. Not great but enjoyable.