And dont forget to book your Mini test drive in the foyer after the movie..!

Rating: Null/10 (4 September 2003)

This remake of Peter Collinson's popular 1969 caper set me thinking about comparisons between the movie's star cars, the Mini Cooper S. In many ways the new film resembles the new car; bigger, better built, competent, yet utterly lacking in character, relevance or the intangible fun factor.

Despite a lively start in Venice (providing the only pretext for the film's title), The Italian Job soon showed signs of triteness and thin characterisation. Sutherland's 'Mr Bridger' was played with a sort of fluffy-haired, huggy beneficence that instantly marked him out for a predictable death. King-of-the-remakes Wahlberg once again demonstrated his brilliant future in rap music, and Charlize Theron provided an attractive, if vapid and rather anaemic love interest. Only Edward Norton's character played anything remotely like the clever criminal personalities supposedly involved.
For a 'caper' film, the plot was disappointingly linear with none of the intrigue, paranoia or suspenseful setbacks one would have expected in this genre. The Ukrainian mafia was a token nod to the Italians of the original (are Italian gangsters in America thought passe by now?) yet thrown in almost as an afterthought, and serve only to provide the Norton character with his inevitable undoing. The writers obviously felt they needed a handy way of avoiding blood on the hands of our saintly anti-heroes. Even continuity errors don't seem to trouble the producers' pursuit of mediocrity - a motorcycle with rider crashes into the door of one of the Minis during the chase only to cause it no damage in the ensuing scenes.
The original Italian Job had eccentricity, wit, colour, the clash of English versus Continental cultures, and above all, class. The remake is nothing but Starbucks coffee in a brightly coloured styrofoam cup. In view of the fact that similar territory has been covered recently (and so much better) anyway, by Ocean's Eleven and The Score makes me wonder why the project was even considered viable. In this age of product placement I have a sneaking suspicion that BMW may have had a hand in the funding somewhere.. 4/10