Well made but pretty adolescent

Rating: 4/10 (1 December 2004)

This is a heist movie. I am fine with heist movies but they have to be ironic (like Ocean's Eleven). After all we watch thieves and in the case of The Italian Job we watch pretty adolescent thieves taking what they do much too serious. Heist movies are to be about stealing something in a very elaborate and cool way, not about very deep emotional problems. So this film here mixes cool, state-of-the-art technological stealing and a revenge story. And Edward Norton's villain is much too mean, he destroys the ironic heist story. It is the same problem with the James Bond movies: it is pretty tasteless to see Bond tortured. Bond is supposed to be a comic strip hero, not really serious. Because if you take the characters in this movie serious you want to sink them all in prisons to teach them a lesson how to behave in the world of adults.