Get off your high horses, guys...

Rating: 2/10 (17 September 2010)

I've been reading a couple of reviews here, and was surprised, granted out of only 10 comments written to this moment, to see raving blabber on "most complex heist movie since...", or "Ben has proved that x movie was not a fluke", and even references to "Good Will ..", and one even mentioned Oscar nominations. Obviously some of these people have been born only 10 years ago, or else they would recognize the botched rip-off of such heist movies as Point Break 1991, or more recently Heat 1995(which is a remake of a lesser version of itself LA Takedown 1989), to name but the most shamelessly plagiarized ones. So Ben didn't really dig too deep for inspiration. I will call it inspiration although a plagiarism law suit wouldn't come as a surprise to me in relation to The Town. I guess Ben saw himself as kind of a Mc Cauley-de Niro in Heat, Hamm would be Hanna-Pacino, Jeremy Renner a kind of Tom Sizemore-Cheritto, and Rebecca Hall-Amy Brenneman-Eady. I especially liked the phone conversation between Ben and her where she stands at the window with all police waiting and she gives him the sign, wink!,that she's under surveillance and he should split...(to use a bit of heist flick lingo, myself)Does it remind anyone of the scene where Ashley Judd gives Val Kilmer the sign that he should disappear, after the heist gone wrong? I guess not, for the time being.
I won't even start with the gratuitous work-out scene where Ben shows us his six-pack...talk about gratuitous. Also, there are some f-word written to a small piece of paper jokes, the guys in the last row will laugh at for sure. Real brain puzzlers. Acting, on Ben's part is no surprise. He walks around frown-mouthed and thinks he is in character. Pityfull. Hamm does not have another persona outside Mad Men, and should stick to TV, in my opinion. Direction-I especially enjoyed the shaky close-up camera work during the action sequences, to create dynamism, no doubt Ben must have thought to himself.
Altogether a plot-holes filled rip-off, and not a good one at that, either.
Oh, and one more thing, why again did Bendoug have to go poking around Claire? To find out how much she knows? After the FBI had already questioned her? So he can attract more attention to himself? Well I guess by asking these questions the whole plot kind of unravels like a poorly woven 5 bucks sweater when you pull a loose thread...