For Gene Hackman, who passed recently. Written and directed by David Mamet. The cast had potential — Hackman is joined by Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, Sam Rockwell, Ricky Jay, and of course Mamet's squeeze-muse Rebecca Pigeon. There's more realism here than in The Spanish Prisoner (1997), perhaps reflecting the shift to summery but sombre Boston. (Pigeon is the only woman in Boston, in contrast with The Town.) The mechanics of the heist were rapidly obsoleted by 9/11. (I did not try to track all the details; I took it for granted that we were getting drip fed only some of the salients.) The dialogue is tame and relatively sparse. Many scenes do not work; take the shootout on the dock for instance. Rockwell is ill-used. The ending is quite poor. The dire IMDB rating is well-deserved.
Roger Ebert: three-and-a-half stars. "Close attention may reveal a couple of loopholes in the plot." — say it ain't so. A Critic's Pick by A. O. Scott. Mamet is erratic.
