heist

THE DUKE: he finally gets his audience

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Photo caption: Jim Broadbent in THE DUKE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

The Duke is a showcase for character actor Jim Broadbent, who plays, fittingly, an overlooked man who finally gets the audience that he has yearned for. This true life story is an audience-pleaser.

Broadbent plays Kempton Bunton,the a working class guy in grimy 1961 Newcastle. Bunton is one of those people who needs to litigate every grievance, particularly slight, ordinary ones that the rest of us choose to bypass on the way to living our lives. The current outrage that has derailed Bunton’s life is the tiny fee charged to every Briton with a television; Bunton believes that the poorest widows and disabled vets should be excused from paying. He has elevated this to such a matter of principle that he has actually gone to prison for it. Yet no one takes notice of his campaign. His longsuffering wife (Helen Mirren) would prefer that he shut up and get a job.

Kempton Bunton is also a witty autodidact, with more mastery of literature and history than most college grads. And what he lacks in common sense, he makes up with a genius for the instantaneous barbed bon mot.

Bunton is incensed when the British government spends 140,000 pounds on a Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington. Bunton objects to the government’s priorities (and is needled by Wellington’s post-military career as a reactionary politician).

It turns out that the painting is housed in a museum with some very significant security lapses, and soon it is hidden in Bunton’s Newcastle flat, with Bunton sending demands to the government, seeking to ransom the Duke’s portrait for relief in the television fee. A nationwide manhunt ensues.

Again, Kempton Bunton was a real person and these events really happened. Jim Broadbent is very fun to watch as they transpire.

Despite his eccentric passions, Bunton has never gotten the attention of any authority higher than the lowest government functionary or any audience bigger than passersby on his street corner. Events take a turn, and Bunton suddenly has a national stage. When Bunton gets to match wits with the poshest of his antagonists, Broadbent’s performance soars.

Movie goers have appreciated Broadbent’s gifts since he played Col the sympathetic bartender in The Crying Game. Since then, he’s been seen widely in the Harry Potter franchise and plenty of big movies. But I like him best in the most observational and character-driven films: Widow’s Peak, Little Voice, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Iris, Another Year, The Sense of an Ending:

Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren in THE DUKE. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

Mirren, of course, is brilliant and hilarious in a part that is severely glammed-down from her usual roles.

Matthew Goode sparkles with playful charm as Bunton’s realistic defense lawyer. I first noticed Goode as the scary thug in The Lookout (2007), but he is best known for playing Lady Mary’s sleek beau Henry Talbot in Downton Abbey.

Make sure you watch until the very end to see a cameo by James Bond and Dr. No.

The Duke is an amiable entertainment that finishes very strong. The Duke is in theaters.

THE HEIST OF THE CENTURY: improbable, ingenious and all too human

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Guillermo Francella and Diego Peretti in THE HEIST OF THE CENTURY. Photo courtesy of Mill Valley Film Festival.

The Heist of the Century, a delightful crime tale from Argentina, tells a story that would be unbelievable – except it all really happened.

Most improbably, one of the masterminds is Fernando (Diego Peretti), a dope-smoking, new agey martial arts instructor. He has an idea for One Big Score – a bank robbery that will take hours, during daylight, in the middle of the city, and is certain to mobilize the entire police force. Fernando enlists a highly disciplined, professional criminal Luis Mario (Guillermo Francella); initially skeptical of and resistant to both Fernando and the job, Luis Mario joins Fernando in planning and assembling a team.

The planning is meticulous, including unexpected elements like studying the SWAT Team manual on hostage negotiations and attending acting class. Three of their solutions to defeating the bank’s security demonstrate undeniable genius.

The heist itself, with the seconds ticking and the bank surrounded by an army of police, is thrilling. The thieves have a formidable opponent in the police negotiator Sileo (an excellent Luis Luque); he is a wise and solid pro surrounded by lesser minds – and he doesn’t appreciate being made to look like Wiley Coyote.

However, what looks like a triumph might come to ruin – because of the most human of foibles. The ending is amazing.  

The Heist of the Century is the true story of the 2006 Banco Rio robbery in Acassuso, Argentina, a seaside suburb of Buenos Aires. Fernando Araujo, the original mastermind, is credited as one of the screenwriters.

The Heist of the Century is directed by Ariel Winograd, who emphasizes the contrasting personalities of Fernando and Luis Mario and creates a perfect balance between the humor and the thrills. Winograd spices the soundtrack with music ranging from The Kinks, spaghetti westerns to Motown and opens with a cheesy James Bondesque tune.

Guillermo Francella, who plays Luis Mario, played Ricardo Darin’s drunk assistant in The Secrets of Their Eyes. In this movie, Francella’s real life daughter Ana plays Mario Luis’ daughter Lu.

I screened The Heist of the Century for the Mill Valley Film Festival in October 2020. Now you can stream it from HBO Max, Amazon, Vudu and YouTube.

coming up on TV: THE BURGLAR – loyalty among

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Jayne Mansfield and Dan Duryea in THE BURGLAR

Turner Classic Movies is presenting one of my Overlooked Noir on December 12, and you shouldn’t miss it. The Burglar (1957) is known popularly as the movie debut of Jayne Mansfield,  but it’s a fine film noir.  It starts out with a tense burglary, but once the necklace is successfully burgled, the story focuses on the heist team going stir crazy as they wait for the environment to cool down so they can safely fence the booty. They are strung so tight that even the whistle of a tea kettle is enough to startle the gang. While dodging the cops, they find that they are also being hunted by a corrupt rogue cop and his partner.

The core of The Burglar is the stellar lead performance of Dan Duryea as the chief burglar. He’s a tortured and worn-out guy – with one deep loyalty.

There are plenty of noir moments – lots of shadows, uplit faces in the darkness and amoral, grasping characters. We have not one, but two noir vixens – Jayne Mansfield and Martha Vickers. Asked at a bar by Duryea what she wants, Vickers answers “Basically, I’m out to find myself a man.” The characters in this fine film noir find themselves in Atlantic City, where the bad cop chases the protagonists through the House of Horrors and the Steel Pier, culminating in a final confrontation under the boardwalk.

The acting is excellent, other than Peter Capell, who gives over-acting a bad name while playing the most nerve-wracked member of the gang.  Even Mansfield is good; (The Burglar was held in the can for two years and then released when Mansfield became a sensation with The Girl Can’t Help It).

The movie was shot on location in Philadelphia and Atlantic City. We see Independence Hall, and it’s hard not to think of Rocky when Duryea climbs the steps to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Burglar plays from time to time on Turner Classic Movies and is available streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, and other platforms.

[Note: The Burglar features John Facenda as his real-life role as a Philadelphia newscaster (when local TV stations aired 15-minute newscasts). Facenda later found much broader fame as “The Voice of God” for his narration for NFL Films football documentaries.]

THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE: pointed satire in the form of a heist movie

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Alexandre Landry and Maripier Morin in THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

In the pointed satire The Fall of the American Empire, Pierre-Paul (Alexandre Landry) chafes at his dead-end blue-collar job as an express freight delivery driver; he feels that, with his PhD in Philosophy, he has been unjustly screwed out of a much better life by the System. He may be right, but he’s also a self-absorbed putz, who is justifiably dumped by his girlfriend. But then he happens across a windfall fortune of ill-gotten cash – and keeps it. The critical questions, of course, are how he can escape from the ruthless gang and the corrupt police who want to recover the money, and how will he be able to spend the money without getting caught? Pierre-Paul is a heads-in-the-clouds intellectual, and he is totally over-matched.

Fortunately, Pierre-Paul makes the acquaintance of a criminal mastermind, Sylvain ‘The Brain’ Bigras (Rémy Girard), who has just been released from prison. Pierre-Paul also can’t resist blowing some of his newfound treasure on Montreal’s most expensive escort, the astonishingly beautiful Aspasie (Maripier Morin). She used to be the mistress of the powerful banker Taschereau (Pierre Curzi), and soon Pierre-Paul has a team of confederates with real know-how.

Veteran French-Canadian writer-director Denys Arcand portrays a society corrupted head-to-toe by the capitalist imperative to acquire more and more money. And all of the characters make a point of insisting getting theirs in American dollars. The two older guys – one a lifelong outlaw and convict and the other a socially and politically prominent banker – hit if off immediately; after all, they’re both crooks.

Arcand comes at his films from the the Left, but he skewers the doctrinaire Left with equal glee. He pokes fun at the personal foibles of individuals on the Left, but saves his savagery for the inequalities of Capitalism. While he is sending up the entire Capitalist system. he makes his points without descending into a screed. All the fun in The Fall of the American Empire is dotted with realistic – and some real – plight of the homeless – depicted neither with finger-wagging or as maudlin.

The satire fits into the formula of a heist film – the assembling of a team to pull off a job. Of course, here they already HAVE the money, and they don’t need to steal it. To get the benefit of the money, they need to launder it and hide it from tax authorities.

Rémy Girard in THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE

Arcand stalwarts Rémy Girard and Pierre Curzi both give superb performances. Vincent Leclerc, as a homeless man who volunteers at a soup kitchen, has an especially moving scene.

Arcand is known for his trilogy The Decline of the American Empire (1986), The Barbarian Invasions (2003 and Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film) and Days of Darkness (2006 – which I haven’t seen).

While the love story between Pierre-Paul and Aspasie and the Robin Hood aspect of our heroes’ plans are fantasies, The Fall of the American Empire has an authenticity at its core – the impact of disparity of wealth in a system rigged in favor of the Haves. And it’s damn funny – progressively funnier as the money-laundering scheme takes shape. The Fall of the American Empire opens June 7 in the Bay Area, and will spread to more local theaters in June.

MUSEO: portrait of alienation in the form of a heist

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MUSEO

The true life Mexican heist film Museo is really a portrait of alienation – and immature alienation at that. It’s about a young middle class guy in a third world country, and he has first wold problems; his prospects are not unlimited, but he’s way better off than his less educated compatriots. So he and his weak-willed buddy pull off an audacious art theft.

Unusually, and perhaps uniquely, among heist films, hardly any time is invested in assembling the team (here it’s the guy and his buddy) or in the heist itself. The guys steal the most famous ancient Mexican artifacts from the National Museum, essentially the heart of the nation’s heritage. The theft becomes a sensation that dominates the national zeitgeist, triggers an all-out manhunt and a political scandal. How could this have happened?

Of course, there can’t possibly be any buyers for such high visibility objects (just like in this year’s other real life slacker heist film American Animals). Most of the film is figuring out what to do next – and good options are non-existent.

The protagonist is played by the fine actor Gael Garcia Bernal. Unfortunately, this character really isn’t that interesting; I think that is because his alienation is based on petulance and not on rage (see the great Jack Nicholson ragingly alienated roles of the 70s).

Museo does a good job of evoking the Mexico City and Acapulco in the mid 1980s. But without the central thrill of a heist, we are left with an unsympathetic protagonist and his predicament, and that’s really not enough for a two-hour movie. I saw Museo at the Mill Valley Film Festival.

https://vimeo.com/287000720

AMERICAN ANIMALS: a preposterous heist

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AMERICAN ANIMALS

In Bart Layton’s clever documentary/re-enactment mashup American Animals, four college kids plan a major art heist. The film opens with the title words THIS IS NOT BASED ON A TRUE STORY morphing into THIS IS A TRUE STORY. Indeed, in 2003, four college kids really did target $12 million in rare Audubon and Darwin books at the Transylvania University library in Lexington, Kentucky.

The story follows the classic arc of a heist movie -the intricate planning, the assembling of a team and, finally, the Big Day.  Because the heist is so preposterous (and because these guys are smoking a lot of weed while planning it), the whole thing is pretty funny.

Layton has his cake and eats it, too.  He has actors re-enact the real events.  And he has the real participants commenting as talking heads.  (With the retrospect of fifteen years, none of the participants now thinks that the heist was a good idea.)

I was especially eager to see American Animals because director Bart Layton also made The Imposter, one of the most jaw-dropping documentaries I have seen. American Animals is not as good as the unforgettable The Imposter, but funnier and more inventive – and damn entertaining.

I saw American Animals at the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM).  It opens in the Bay Area this weekend.

THE SICILIAN CLAN: Gabin, Delon and Ventura

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Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in THE SICILIAN CLAN
Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in THE SICILIAN CLAN

The 1969 French neo-noir The Sicilian Clan is an exemplar of noir’s Perfect Crime sub-genre – they’re going to get away with the elaborately planned big heist EXCEPT FOR ONE THING.  In this case, the one thing is Sicilian macho pride.

There’s an inventive jail break, an exciting boudoir escape and an impossibly brilliant heist plan. There’s also a great scene with a kid and his toy gun.  The suspense tightens even more when a minor character’s wife unexpectedly shows up and threatens to derail the heist again and again.

Most of all, director Henri Verneuil knew that he had three unbeatable cards to play, and he got the most from them:

  • Alain Delon –  Impossibly handsome and dashing, no one ever removed their sunglasses with more of a flourish than Delon.  Delon was in his early thirties, and at the peak of his string of crime movie vehicles, after Anybody Can Win and Le Samourai and before Le Cercle Rouge and The Gypsy.
  • Lino Ventura –  One of the most watchable French stars, Ventura’s bloodhound face had been reshaped by his earlier career as a professional wrestler.   Here, he’s the guy you’re drawn to whenever he’s on-screen.
  • Jean Gabin – Probably the greatest male French movie star ever, Gabin had dominated prewar French cinema with Pepe LeMoko, La Grande Illusion, Port of Shadows and Le Bete Humaine.  After the war, he aged into noir (Touchez Pas aux Grisbi) and, in the 1960s, into neo-noir.  Gabin oozed a seasoned cool (like Bogart) and imparted a stately gravitas to his noir and neo-noir characters.

In The Sicilian Clan, Delon plays the reckless hood in over his head.  Gabin plays the crime boss who is exploiting him.  And Ventura plays the cagey detective after them both.

Here’s a nice touch – the highly professional gang brings in an outsider who is a hopeless drunk.  What is his specialty and why do they need him?  When we find out during the final heist, it’s a stunner that no one could see coming.

The whistling and boings in the offbeat score tell us that it’s the work of Ennio Morricone in his Spaghetti Western period; I’m a Morricone fan, but this is not one of his best.

The Sicilian Clan is not a classic.  The dialogue is grossly clichéd.  There is not a single ordinary looking woman in the film.  An obligatory tryst is tiresomely predictable and made worse by the score’s wacky, clanging music.

But the plot, while contrived, is well-contrived.  And the combination of Delon, Ventura and Gabin will make almost anything work.  You can watch The Sicilian Clan at the Castro Theatre during Noir City 2017, or stream it from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

[Note: In our post 9/11 world, audiences will feel uneasy when a hijacked airplane flies low over the Manhattan skyscrapers.]

Lino Ventura and Alain Delon in THE SICILIAN CLAN
Lino Ventura and Alain Delon in THE SICILIAN CLAN