Fabmacca
17-Jan-06, 09:59am
The Italian Job (Original) (1969). "Directed" by Peter Collinson. "Written" by Troy Kennedy-Martin.
This film was one of the worst films I've seen.
You know, I was actually talking to my television, telling lead actor Michael Caine to "shut the fu8k up" with his hateful cockney accent and smarmy I'm-better-than-you attitude and wooden dental structure, on NUMEROUS occasions. Had the film ended with a "Get Carter"-esque sniper rifle shot to his head, I would've raised both arms in triumph and increased my rating of the film greatly (well... I would have doubled it). Dammit, I thought Ben Affleck sucked in movies. Michael Caine in full flight? Worse.
How did this movie garner enough support for the almost infinitely superior remake(ish) film released in 2003? Let's talk about how much better THAT movie was, without necessarily even being classed as a very good movie:
1. The remake had an ensemble cast that was more than simply "cockney accents 1 through 9" for one thing. In the remake, each character had a distinct job as well as being quite different-looking (a tall dude with stubble, a black guy with explosives and a dodgey bike, a weedy white kid with laptop, a Mark Wahlberg). In the original, you had Michael Caine and the other Benny Hill. And sure, one of the cockney accents wore a beret. But the other eight? Identically inconsequential.
2. The remake had Charlize Theron in it. This one had one miscellaneous brunette, and she was sent home after she proved to be a complete moron.
3. The remake had Edward Norton in it. At least Edward Norton was an antagonist. The original movie didn't even have that. The crime was effectively victimless.
Other than that, the movie left spurious plotholes and gaps in decent plotting aplenty, like little trails of urine from a badly housetrained puppy.
For instance:
1. Why did Michael Caine need funding for the plan? He didn't have his own contacts?
2. Also, he inherited the plan. No hard work, it was all done for him.
3. How did Michael Caine and co suddenly end up in a palatial house in Turin anyway?
4. After they go nuts and attack the truck carrying the gold, and drive the truck into a church/warehouse (?), why do random passersby chase after them rather than getting the hell out of the way of the masked dudes with weapons? Mob psychology generally says you move AWAY from gunfire.
5. The training montage involved one truck being blown up so that Michael Caine could shout at the Cockney Accent Troupe.
6. Sure, casting comedian Benny Hill as a computer expert with a fetish for fat ladies was a stroke of genius for casting against type (ummm..). And, sure, back then computers were so strange and mysterious that I'm certain nobody in 1969 realised that 'Britain's foremost computer expert' was being hired to do little more than replace one ancient tape-driven disc with another, a task so tricky that its modern equivalent could be performed by a 3 year old. But still. Lame.
7. And if the entire city was gridlocked because of the traffic jam our "heroes" "caused", then where did those police cars come from that showed up at the church not minutes after the robbery? What happened here?
8. And what was the relevance of the Mafia dude who shoots up Caine's cars when he ambushes the group in the mountains? No, really. If he was a rival, why didn't he have a group going for the gold? If he was a corrupt defender of the gold, why weren't there more security protecting the truck?
9. And did anybody ever bother to figure out what that thing was that they were putting in rubbish bins to provide interference so that police traffic cameras would be disabled? Were they "shoddy essence of plot device the writer came up with on the toilet" or something actually plausible? Because I suspect the former. And the screenwriting still stunk.
Oh, and I'm just going to bypass the entire physics-defying, brain-numbing, badly acted stupidity of the part at the end where the getaway bus with the gold is precariously balanced on a cliff, threatening the death of everyone.
Actually, no, I'm not. Look, I'm not asking for too much in my movies where plausibility is concerned. All I care about is that playground physics are adhered to.
The thing with the gold and the bus has to do with weight distribution. If something balances when everyone is evenly spread, it'll balance even more advantageously for survival when everyone moves to one end (the part not near the cliff). Here, everyone moves away from the cliff and only afterwards does the gold slides away from them. How?? And then Michael Caine alone crawls back and THEN the gold slides even more! Of course when (a mere five minutes earlier) the maniac driving the bus was weaving his way around the mountain's winding roads and everyone inside was flailing from side to side, the gold was completely immobile and unmoving. Asinine.
What kind of equilibrium is this? Note to the writers : you don't need a physics degree, you just need to know how a goddamn playground see-saw works.
This movie was smarmy, self-satisfied, gave me no characters to like, no enemies to rail against (or even support, for that matter), gave me no decent acting, and in doing made me dislike Mini Coopers forever (well ....... only for a millisecond, they really are fantastic cars). The car chases were idiotic anyway, they were just excuses for Michael Caine to tell people to shut up while driving. I hated this movie almost from beginning to end, and I'd been having a fine new year up until this point.
I don't care about the "cool" retro zeitgeist, I don't care about the sixties, and I don't care that the only thing movie gave the moviegoing public of the day was a chance to laugh at Italians. And I entirely dispute the internet movie database, which claims this is a "comic caper". Ain't no way this is a comedy, I laughed less here than I did in Happy Gilmore or Deuce Bigalow, and they were less than three laughs each.
This movie sucked utterly. I give it 1 out of 10. The 1 comes for the theft of the Pakistani ambassador's limo. The movie doesn't show the theft, just a one-liner and the Pakistani flag. It's about 4 minutes into the film, and I should have stopped watching there.
This film was one of the worst films I've seen.
You know, I was actually talking to my television, telling lead actor Michael Caine to "shut the fu8k up" with his hateful cockney accent and smarmy I'm-better-than-you attitude and wooden dental structure, on NUMEROUS occasions. Had the film ended with a "Get Carter"-esque sniper rifle shot to his head, I would've raised both arms in triumph and increased my rating of the film greatly (well... I would have doubled it). Dammit, I thought Ben Affleck sucked in movies. Michael Caine in full flight? Worse.
How did this movie garner enough support for the almost infinitely superior remake(ish) film released in 2003? Let's talk about how much better THAT movie was, without necessarily even being classed as a very good movie:
1. The remake had an ensemble cast that was more than simply "cockney accents 1 through 9" for one thing. In the remake, each character had a distinct job as well as being quite different-looking (a tall dude with stubble, a black guy with explosives and a dodgey bike, a weedy white kid with laptop, a Mark Wahlberg). In the original, you had Michael Caine and the other Benny Hill. And sure, one of the cockney accents wore a beret. But the other eight? Identically inconsequential.
2. The remake had Charlize Theron in it. This one had one miscellaneous brunette, and she was sent home after she proved to be a complete moron.
3. The remake had Edward Norton in it. At least Edward Norton was an antagonist. The original movie didn't even have that. The crime was effectively victimless.
Other than that, the movie left spurious plotholes and gaps in decent plotting aplenty, like little trails of urine from a badly housetrained puppy.
For instance:
1. Why did Michael Caine need funding for the plan? He didn't have his own contacts?
2. Also, he inherited the plan. No hard work, it was all done for him.
3. How did Michael Caine and co suddenly end up in a palatial house in Turin anyway?
4. After they go nuts and attack the truck carrying the gold, and drive the truck into a church/warehouse (?), why do random passersby chase after them rather than getting the hell out of the way of the masked dudes with weapons? Mob psychology generally says you move AWAY from gunfire.
5. The training montage involved one truck being blown up so that Michael Caine could shout at the Cockney Accent Troupe.
6. Sure, casting comedian Benny Hill as a computer expert with a fetish for fat ladies was a stroke of genius for casting against type (ummm..). And, sure, back then computers were so strange and mysterious that I'm certain nobody in 1969 realised that 'Britain's foremost computer expert' was being hired to do little more than replace one ancient tape-driven disc with another, a task so tricky that its modern equivalent could be performed by a 3 year old. But still. Lame.
7. And if the entire city was gridlocked because of the traffic jam our "heroes" "caused", then where did those police cars come from that showed up at the church not minutes after the robbery? What happened here?
8. And what was the relevance of the Mafia dude who shoots up Caine's cars when he ambushes the group in the mountains? No, really. If he was a rival, why didn't he have a group going for the gold? If he was a corrupt defender of the gold, why weren't there more security protecting the truck?
9. And did anybody ever bother to figure out what that thing was that they were putting in rubbish bins to provide interference so that police traffic cameras would be disabled? Were they "shoddy essence of plot device the writer came up with on the toilet" or something actually plausible? Because I suspect the former. And the screenwriting still stunk.
Oh, and I'm just going to bypass the entire physics-defying, brain-numbing, badly acted stupidity of the part at the end where the getaway bus with the gold is precariously balanced on a cliff, threatening the death of everyone.
Actually, no, I'm not. Look, I'm not asking for too much in my movies where plausibility is concerned. All I care about is that playground physics are adhered to.
The thing with the gold and the bus has to do with weight distribution. If something balances when everyone is evenly spread, it'll balance even more advantageously for survival when everyone moves to one end (the part not near the cliff). Here, everyone moves away from the cliff and only afterwards does the gold slides away from them. How?? And then Michael Caine alone crawls back and THEN the gold slides even more! Of course when (a mere five minutes earlier) the maniac driving the bus was weaving his way around the mountain's winding roads and everyone inside was flailing from side to side, the gold was completely immobile and unmoving. Asinine.
What kind of equilibrium is this? Note to the writers : you don't need a physics degree, you just need to know how a goddamn playground see-saw works.
This movie was smarmy, self-satisfied, gave me no characters to like, no enemies to rail against (or even support, for that matter), gave me no decent acting, and in doing made me dislike Mini Coopers forever (well ....... only for a millisecond, they really are fantastic cars). The car chases were idiotic anyway, they were just excuses for Michael Caine to tell people to shut up while driving. I hated this movie almost from beginning to end, and I'd been having a fine new year up until this point.
I don't care about the "cool" retro zeitgeist, I don't care about the sixties, and I don't care that the only thing movie gave the moviegoing public of the day was a chance to laugh at Italians. And I entirely dispute the internet movie database, which claims this is a "comic caper". Ain't no way this is a comedy, I laughed less here than I did in Happy Gilmore or Deuce Bigalow, and they were less than three laughs each.
This movie sucked utterly. I give it 1 out of 10. The 1 comes for the theft of the Pakistani ambassador's limo. The movie doesn't show the theft, just a one-liner and the Pakistani flag. It's about 4 minutes into the film, and I should have stopped watching there.