FILM REVIEW OF ''FAST FIVE" (2011)

As the fourth sequel in "The Fast and the Furious" franchise, "Five Fast" (***1/2 out of ****) combines elements of a Tom Cruise "Mission Impossible" epic as well as the George Clooney, Brad Pitt & Matt Damon "Ocean's Eleven" outings. Our high-octane protagonists have fled south to Rio de Janeiro. They plan to steal a fortune in cold cash from Brazil’s most dangerous man because he framed them for murder. Swift, swerving, snappy reflex driving constitutes an integral part of this careening carefree narrative. Mind you, the larger-than-life heist and the way our heroes not only prepare but also pull it off absorbs about half of the film’s brisk 130 minutes. Justin Lin and his three-time “Fast and Furious” collaborator scenarist Chris Morgan have raised the stakes again so they can top “Fast & Furious” and they’ve done a splendid job of topping the previous epic. When Dominic Toretto and Brian O‘Conner aren’t tangling with murderous Brazilian thugs, they must contend with an incorruptible good guy. Tenacious Federal agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson of “Doom“) vows to hunt them down and apprehend them and he never quits. Literally, our heroes are between a ‘Rock’ and a hard place!

“The Fast and the Furious” franchise has evolved over the last decade from illegal street racing done in conjunction with some crime. Initially, the speeders hijacked eighteen-wheelers for their loads. Since “Fast & Furious,” they have involved themselves in bigger crimes. The life & death heist here is as outlandish as it is audacious. Indeed, “Fast Five” surpasses “Fast & Furious” for no other reason than its final 30 minutes overshadows everything before it. No, Toretto and O’Connor couldn’t have gotten away with their ambitious scheme in real life any more than they could navigate those tunnels without accident in “Fast & Furious.” Nevertheless, Lin and Morgan make their strenuous efforts look like a lot of fun, something that the tunnel racing sequences lacked.

“Fast Five” opens where “Fast & Furious” ended. Dominic ‘Dom’ Toretto (Vin Diesel of “xXx”) has been sentenced to 25 years in Lompoc prison. Former FBI agent Paul O’Connor (Paul Walker of “Into the Blue”) and Dom’s sister Mia (Jordana Brewster of “Annapolis”) along with another driver wreck the prison bus in route so Dom can escape. Incredibly, nobody is hurt in the accident. The opening gambit in the previous movie “Fast & Furious” was so good it made the rest of it appear anti-climactic, but this isn’t the case in “Fast Five.” The idea of a convict escaping in a moving prison bus was done better in the Jean-Claude Van Damme escapade “Nowhere to Run.” Nevertheless, by not showing what actually happened when the bus flipped, the filmmakers probably saved a bundle on eliminating the aftermath of the crash. Make no mistake, Lin and Morgan top themselves in “Fast Five.”

Once O’Connor and Mia have Dom sprung, they are approached by Dom’s childhood friend Vince (Matt Schulze of “Blade 2”) about a railroad heist where they will steal some sports cars. This heist is more like the opening gambit in “Fast & Furious.” A wrecker cruises up alongside a train and the thieves cut an oblong hole in the freight car containing the vehicles. They propel the cars sideways out onto the wrecker’s ramp and then lower the ramp so the drivers can back down off it and peel away in a cloud of dust. Of course, nothing can go smoothly in a heist movie. Our heroes discover that the DEA have impounded the cars and their native gun-toting accomplices refuse to let the DEA thwart them. The Brazilian gunmen kill the DEA agents without a qualm, while our heroes are incriminated for the killings. Dom helps O’Connor get off the train, but Dom plummets his convertible into a river.

The Feds dispatch Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson of “Faster”) to capture Toretto and O’Connor. Meanwhile, Dom concocts an incredible plan to take over a $100-million from the man whose killers gunned down the DEA agents. In South America, crooked entrepreneur Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almedia of “Desperado”) rules the country. Reyes gets whatever he demands. Our heroes find a computer chip in a sports cars that contains a treasure-trove of information about all of Reye’s cash stashes. Dom urges them to pull ‘one last job’ and rob Reyes blind. Our protagonists assemble a racing team that includes O’Connor’s childhood friend Roman Pearce (Tyrese Gibson of “2 Fast 2 Furious”), Tej Parker (Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges of “2 Fast 2 Furious”), Han Lue (Sung Kang of “Tokyo Drift”), former Israeli intelligence agent Gisele Harabo (Gal Gadot of “Fast & Furious”), and a couple of others. Dom and company strike the first of Reye’s safe houses. Reye’s men watch in horror as our heroes burn the money. Immediately, Reye relocates his fortune to the downtown police station. He locks it up in a vault that can only be opened with his hand print. If you’ve seen the trailer for “Fast Five,” you know they steal the entire vault and then drag it like a wrecking ball through town so the finale looks like a demolition derby.

Ultimately, “Fast Five” is about having a good time. Again, the heroes are the underdogs, while the villains are thoroughly treacherous. The Rock shows up as a good guy caught in the middle. He is wants to capture our heroes because they are his quarry. Of course, the fast driving scenes thrive on adrenalin-pacing. The numerous gunfights, however, lack the spontaneity that somebody, like gifted British director Paul Greengrass brought to the last two “Bourne” thrillers and “Green Zone” with Matt Damon. Naturally, the Brazilian scenery is fabulous, and “Fast Five” serves as a travelogue when Lin and Morgan aren’t wrapping expository scenes about the heist around our ears. Like most energetic big, dumb action films, “Fast Five” packs several surprises that change everything and make you yearn for a fifth sequel. Be advised, don’t leave the theater until the entire end credits roll, you’re definitely in for a surprise. “Fast Five” reunites virtually everybody and then some who have survived all previous epics.

FILM REVIEW OF ''LAW ABIDING CITIZEN" (2009)

"Set It Up" director F. Gary Gray's sophisticated but far-fetched law and order actioneer "Law Abiding Citizen" (**** out of ****) ranks as the one of best mediations about our flawed justice system in the guise of a cracker-jack popcorn thriller. Good movies pack twists and turns as well as surprises, and "Street Kings" scenarist Kurt Wimmer serves up at least five (count'em) surprises in this high-octane hybrid of prison pictures and mass murderer epics. Moreover, Wimmer has created an imaginative cat & mouse conflict of wills between a stalwart hero and an ingenious villain who share shades of gray. In other words, Jamie Foxx's prosecutor appears callous, while Gerard Butler's villain retains some sympathy. You may find yourself rooting for bad-guy Butler over good-guy Foxx. Meanwhile, Gray stages the white-knuckled action with finesse to spare. "Law Abiding Citizen" surpasses Gray's earlier nail-biters "The Italian Job," "The Negotiator" and "A Man Apart." Not only does Gerard Butler constantly upstage a dour Jamie Foxx, but Butler delivers the strongest performance. He comes close to chewing the scenery, but the villain that he plays would chew scenery so his juicy performance isn't too far off base.

"Law-Abiding Citizen" opens with two desperate criminals, Clarence Darby (Christian Stotle of "Public Enemies") and Rupert Ames (Josh Stewart of "The Collector"), invading a house in suburban Philadelphia. The two are posing as food delivery guys; at least, Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler of "The Ugly Truth") opens the door for them because he mistakenly believes they are in food delivery. Before he has time to react, they smash him savagely with a baseball bat, knock him down, and then gag and tie him with plastic zip-ties. A helpless Clyde watches in horror as Clarence stabs his wife (Brook Stacy Mills of "Hairspray")and is about to rape her when Clyde's daughter (newcomer Ksenia Hulayev) enters the room. The thugs abduct the daughter and the next thing we hear is that the little girl has been murdered, too. Since he cannot assemble enough evidence to convict these hoodlums, career-oriented Assistant Prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx of "The Soloist") decides to preserve his winning record of prosecutions and cuts a deal with Clarence. To get a lighter sentence, the dastardly Clarence testifies that Rupert killed Clyde's wife.

Initially, when he hears about the plea bargain, Clyde is shocked. He saw his family butchered and he hasn't forgotten the murders. Rice points out two things. First, Clarence is going to jail for a long time. Second, Rupert has been sentenced to death by lethal injection based on Clarence testimony. Reluctantly, Clyde trusts Rice to do the right thing, but he has vengeance lurking in his mind. Grief-stricken, Clyde cannot help but feel that justice has been denied him. When it comes time to execute Rupert, he dies in the worse way possible and creates a sensation for Nick and his co-worker, Sarah Lowell (Leslie Bibb of "Iron Man"), who has never attended an execution. Ten years elapse and Clarence gets out of jail, but not for long. Clyde kidnaps him, takes him to an anonymous warehouse and breaks out some of the props that would go with a "Saw." Clyde sends Rice a DVD copy of Clarence's murder, but Clyde cannot be identified in the video because he has on a welder's mask. Things come to a boil when the video arrives at Rice's house and his daughter gets her hands on it. She thinks that it is a video shot of her at a musical recital.

Clyde is waiting when the police arrive, and they take him into custody. Rice appreciates Clyde's vengeance because he has a daughter, too. Afterward, when Rice sets out to prosecute him, Clyde wants to make a deal. What Rice doesn't know is that Clyde is manipulating him.
Eventually, Clyde winds up in solitary confinement, locked up and away from everybody. Rice thinks that everything is cool because Clyde is where he can harm nobody. No sooner is Clyde in solitary than he goes to work. He warns Rice that he will kill, too, unless they release him. Rice is incredulous when public officials who had something to do with the Shelton murder case begin to mysteriously die in front page murders. The mayor of Philadelphia (Viola Davis of "Doubt") demands that Rice take action against Shelton, but Rice can find nothing. After all, Clyde is locked up tight in a maximum security cell with no way to get out of prison.

This thought-provoking morality yarn never wears out its welcome during its nimble 108 minutes. Mind you, the only flaw in the film is its outlandish quality. Nevertheless, the theme that everybody must be held accountable for their actions is played out to perfection by the filmmakers. The first-class supporting class includes Colm Meaney of TV's "Star Trek: The Next Generation" as a Philly detective, Bruce McGill of "Obsessed" as Rice's colleague and Annie Corley of "Monster" as a Philadelphia judge. What you don't catch the first time out in this complex crime movies adds to the entertainment of second and third viewings. Make no mistake, "Law Abiding Citizen" earned its R-rating for strong bloody brutal violence and torture, a scene of rape, and pervasive language. Although its contains some pretty graphic murder sequences, "Law Abiding Citizen" is nowhere near as sadistic or repellent as the latest "Saw" movie "Saw VI."

FILM REVIEW OF ''THUNDERBOLT & LIGHTFOOT'' (1974)

Before he ascended to the zenith of his career with the Oscar-winning Best Picture “The Deer Hunter” (1978) and then plummeted to his nadir with the costly western “Heaven’s Gate” (1980) that bankrupted United Artists and forced them to merge with MGM, writer & director Michael Cimino got his start with Clint Eastwood. Initially, Cimino contributed the Russian roulette sequences to the “Dirty Harry” sequel “Magnum Force.” Incidentally, Cimino’s first credit as a scenarist occurred earlier on director Douglas Trumbull’s sci-fi epic “Silent Running,” with Bruce Dern. Anyway, Cimino made his directorial debut with “Thunderbolt & Lightfoot” (**** out of ****). This exciting, tour-de-force Clint Eastwood & Jeff Bridges thriller ranks as one of the top ten perfect crimes heist movies of the 1970s. Cimino’s film chronicles the friendship between an older man, a Korean War veteran on-the-lam, and a hopelessly footloose but fast-talking twentysomething who cherishes grand theft auto, easy women, and cliches.

Ultimately, Joe Doherty, aka ‘Thunderbolt’ (Clint Eastwood) and Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) team up reluctantly with Eastwood’s old partners-in-crime, Red Leary (George Kennedy of “Cool Hand Luke”) and Goody (Geoffrey Lewis of “High Plains Drifter”) to rob an armored car company. They wind up wielding a 20MM cannon to blow gigantic holes in the wall of the safe. The first third of the action introduces us to the rogue’s gallery of thieves, and the second third details their elaborate plans as they accumulate the necessary tool to pull it off this complicated heist. The third focuses on the frenzied getaway, dissolution of the gang and the final showdown with Red. Not only is “Thunderbolt & Lightfoot” a memorable crime caper with quotable dialogue, but also it is a top-notch drama with interesting characters, including Geoffrey Lewis as a bumbling fool and George Kennedy as a sadistic killer. Jeff Bridges received as Oscar nomination for his sympathetic but ill-fated bad guy. The scenes with Bridges dressing up like a girl to lure a tubby security guard in the alarm systems board are hilarious.

The action opens with scenic long shots of wheat fields to the lovely strains of Dee Barton’s music and we find ourselves near wooden church with a majestic steeple as an old black car wheels up to it. A burly guy in a dark suit and white hat, Dunlop (seasoned heavy Roy Jenson) gets out to stretch his legs as he listens to the choir warble a standard hymn. Cimino switches to another setting as the eponymous young drifter, Lightfoot, limps onto a used car dealership, and admires a Trans Am. The owner, brilliantly played in a bit part by Gregory Walcott) invites him to climb behind the wind and kick the engine over. “She’s cleaner than a cat’s ass,” the dealer brags and then wonders if a youth like Lightfoot can handle her. Lightfoot tells him that he has a wooden leg. While the dealer ponders this sudden shift in conversation, Lightfoot steals the car and tears away across country.

Back at the church, we discover that Clint Eastwood is posing as an Episcopal minister in black suit with a white collar. Just as John ‘Thunderbolt’ Doherty utters some Biblical homilies about the lion lying down with the lamb, Dunlop bursts into the sanctuary with a Mauser machine pistol and triggers a barrage of shots that sends everybody scrambling for the doors, including Doherty. Our hero charges across the wheat field with a wheezing Dunlop in close pursuit, pausing occasionally to fire at his fleet-footed quarry. Doherty flags down a sports car, Lightfoot in the Trans Am, and Lightfoot swerves, plunges into the wheat field, smashes into Dunlop, and kills him. Reversing, Lightfoot races back out of the field. As Lightfoot races past Doherty, Doherty slings himself onto the automobile, climbs through the passenger’s window, dislocating his shoulder, and settles in alongside Lightfoot. Presto, their friendship begins. Along the way, they swap cars with a family and Doherty decides to go his separate way at a bus depot.

Doherty leaves Lightfoot at a bus station. While he is sauntering through the depot, Doherty spots is old crime partner, vindictive Red Leary, and rejoins Lightfoot before he pulls out of town. The guys head off to a motel, and Lightfoot changes vehicle license tags. Along the way, he picks up two cuties, Melody (Catherine Bach) and Gloria (June Fairchild of “Detroit 9000”), and takes them back to the motel. Doherty, we learn, has a bad leg. Gloria inquires about all his scars and he explains that he received them in Korea. When Doherty refuses to take Gloria home at 3 AM, she runs out in her underwear and screams "rape!” Doherty gives her cab fare.

Eventually, Red and Goody catch up with our heroes. Initially, Red tries to ambush in a roadside diner parking lot. Lightfoot leads Red on a careening chase through the mountains with Red blasting away with his carbine but missing. Later, Red and Goody get the drop on them and try to kill them. Doherty disarms Red but refuses to kill him. Instead, he explains he didn’t take the loot from the previous hold-up. They stashed it in a one-room school house. When they returned to get it, the school house had vanished. Lightfoot’s suggests that they rob the same armored car company. Red hates Lightfoot from the get-go, but he cooperates reluctantly as they set up the crime. They take jobs. Goody drives an ice cream wagon. Red is a janitor at a local department store. Doherty goes to work as a wielder. Lightfoot works as a landscaping technician. They live in a trailer and pile their dough together while they plan the heist. Lightfoot tells them about his encounter one afternoon while he was pounding turf and a bored housewife stood in the window with nary a stitch on, beaver and all on display. Naturally, the perverted Red wants to know what Lightfoot did. Lightfoot surprises him by clapping his hand over Leary’s mouth and kissing the back of his hand. Predictably, Leary is furious and wants to beat the hell out of Lightfoot.

Our conspirators get through old gear out of storage, namely the 20 MM cannon. Doherty and Leary invade the Montana Armored supervisor home (Jack Dodson of “The Getaway”) wearing hose, tie them up, and get the combination for the safe. Meanwhile, Lightfoot poses as a woman to get into the alarm systems office and silence the alarms. Doherty masquerades as a cop and brings a prisoner, Leary, up to Montana Armored and bluffs his way inside. They slug the guard unconscious, drag him into the toilet, and tie him up. On the other side of town, Lightfoot does the same thing to the alarms system guy, gagging him and leaving him knotted in ropes in the toilet. While Goody goes to pick up Lightfoot, Doherty and Leary assemble the gun, blast giant holes in the vault wall, and grab the loot. Goody and Lightfoot head to Montana Armored where they hook up with Doherty and Leary, load up the loot and take off, leaving the cannon behind. They plan to sit tight at the nearby drive-in, but they close the trunk on Leary so that his shirttail is hanging out and a fat, red-haired cashier spots it. While the cops converge on Montana Armored, the cashier and manager search the parking lot. Doherty pulls out of the drive-in before the cashier and the manager can bust them, but runs straight into the cops. A chase ensues and shots are fired. Goody and Leary are sprawled in the trunk and Goody dies from a gunshot wound. Leary dumps him on a back trail and then forces Doherty to pull over. He kicks Lightfoot repeatedly until the kid passes out and slugs Doherty. Making off with all the loot and a gun, Leary runs into a road block and the cops pursue him back into town.

Leary evades the cop temporarily, but he crashes into the storefront of the department store where he worked as a custodian. A guard dog attacks him and drags his body off as the authorities show up at the door and decide to leave the dog with its prize alone until the dog handler comes in the following morning. Meanwhile, Doherty gets Lightfoot back to where Leary pushed Goody out and they swap clothes so that Lightfoot is no longer dressed up in drag. Our heroes roam the hills and catch a ride in a pick-up and wind up getting out at the Warsaw exit. They stumble upon a roadside historical park where the one-room school house sits. Although they lost the loot from their robbery, they discover the loot from the original robbery still stashed behind the chalkboard. Doherty buys a Cadillac and picks up Lightfoot. Lightfoot got kicked too many times by Leary and he looks awful. He dies as they are driving through scenic Montana and the movie concludes on a dour note.

Cimino provides recurring comic relief scenes to lighten things up and a number of character actors, such as Gregory Walcott of “Plan 9 From Outer Space,” “Gunsmoke” veteran Dub Taylor as a gas station owner, Vic Tayback of “Alice,” and “Deliverance” redneck Bill McKinney as a psychotic who cruises around in a souped up car with white rabbits galore in his trunk, appear at intervals. “Thunderbolt & Lightfoot” was one of the 1970s stick up movies where the robbers got away with the loot. Indeed, Lightfoot, Goody, and Red are punished, but Doherty gets away, largely because he had lost track of the original money and because he was the most sympathetic of all the robbers. “Thunderbolt & Lightfoot” is a brilliant, sometimes violent, often funny heist thriller that heist fanatics owe it to themselves to watch.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE SCORE'' (2001)

Crime pays only for the best of the bad guys in director Frank Oz’s “The Score,” (*** out of ****) an entertaining, straightforward, procedural heist melodrama in the tradition of Michael Cimino’s “Thunderbolt & Lightfoot” (1974) and John McTiernan’s “The Thomas Crown Affair” remake. Not surprisingly, a gifted, powerhouse casting of Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, and Angela Bassett make “The Score” both interesting and easy to watch. Oz depicts the crime of safe-cracking in fairly realistic, down-to-earth terms, in his version of the oft-told tale about the professional criminal that wants to quit the rackets and settle down. Nothing in “The Score” struck me as implausible. Anybody over age thirty who suffers from attention deficit disorder might find it difficult to endure both the quieter, contemplative moments and the deliberate, suspenseful pacing. Not surprisingly, too, Edward Norton excels as a lawbreaker modeled on Kevin Spacey’s Keyser Soze character in Bryan Singer’s first-rate epic “The Usual Suspects.”

All performances in “The Score” are above reproach, even Brando’s flaky Sidney Greenstreet stock character with his Truman Capote wardrobe. Scenarists Kario Salem of “The Fast and the Furious,” Lem Dobbs of “The Limey,” and Scott Marshall Smith of “Men of Honor” have crafted a derivative but solid nail-biter based on a story by Daniel E. Taylor. Never do they let these thieves off the hook, and they confound their every move in an intricately woven yarn of disasters and double-crosses. “The Score” reminded me of those classy, high-stakes European crime thrillers from the 1950s, such as Jules Dassin’s “Rififi” (1954), and “Topkapi” (1964), Giuliano Montaldo’s “Grand Slam” (1968), Henri Verneuil’s “Any Number Can Play (1963), and “The Burglars” (1972), Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi’s “They Came To Rob Las Vegas” (1968), Peter Colllinson’s “The Italian Job” (1968), and Michele Lupo’s “The Master Touch” (1974).

Sure, Hollywood has pulled off its share of these sagas, such as John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950), Phil Karlson’s “Five against the House” (1955), and Lewis Milestone’s “Ocean’s Eleven” (1959), but they don’t compare with these classics. Ironically, “The Score” qualifies as the flip side of Oz’s earlier comedy “Bowfinger,” but the latter boasts a more upbeat ending. Where Steve Martin struggles to produce a movie around Eddie Murphy’s nutty actor in “Bowfinger,” Robert De Niro must outsmart Edward Norton’s devious miscreant during a complex heist. The conflict in “The Score” boils down to an account about the survival of the fittest. The worse criticism is the writers have visited the well once too often for inspiration.

Robert De Niro of “Ronin” plays Nick Wells, a world-weary professional safecracker who owns a jazz club in Montreal when he isn’t pulling jobs out of the country for Max (Marlon Brando of “The Island of Dr. Moreau”), his longtime friend and fence. Nick has survived over the years because he rarely takes chances. Nick recites a speech that sounds like the speech he gave in Michael Mann’s superlative “Heat” about knowing when to walk away from a job. The opening scene brilliantly demonstrates Nick’s imperturbable under pressure in tight spots aplomb. As he is breaking into a safe at a mansion during a late-night party, two young lovers interrupt him. When they cuddle, Nick conceals himself behind a couch. When the girl prefers to smoke a joint before having sex, her boyfriend leaves the darkened room in disgust. Nick grabs the hapless girl from behind when she spots his safecracking tools. He threatens her if she doesn’t keep quiet, and then coolly finishes the heist. Once again, Hollywood warns us smoking pot can get you into deep trouble you never imagined. Something similar happened in the Peter Hyams’ horror movie “Relic.” A deadly creature stumbles onto its first victim, a helpless security guard, and devours him. During the off screen chomping, the camera zooms into a smoldering marijuana cigarette that the guard had been smoking. The message is obvious. If the guard had not been where he was sneaking a few puffs of pot, he would never have been gobbled. Anyway, Nick gets away without being discovered because he believes in discipline. As he later tells an accomplice, “Talent means nothing. Lasting takes discipline.” Max delivers the bad news the day afterward, the person they had planned to sell the jewelry to has died. Nick is upset because he had to finance the jewel heist with $20-thousand of his own money. Max calms him down and tells him about a new job.

Nick wants to settle down with his flight attendant girlfriend, Diane (the lovely Angela Bassett of “Music from the Heart”), but she refuses to marry him if he continues his life of crime. Nick and Diane are seriously contemplating marriage when Max offers Nick a job that will pay $4-million. During their opening dialogue sequence, Nick and Diane discuss what sounds like a crime that Diane participated in with a partner who didn’t make it back from Istanbul. This plot point is left dangling; making it sound like Diane resembles the Pam Grier stewardess in Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown” who smuggled in money. As much as he loves Diane, Nick has second thoughts. He wants to wed Diane, but the prospect of a $4-million paycheck and the potential for paying off the mortgage on his club appeals strongly to him. When Nick reveals his illicit plan to Diane, she walks out in a huff.

Meanwhile, things grow complicated because Max tells Nick that the job is in Montreal.
One of Nick’s standard rules is never to pull a job in his backyard, an idea Max instilled in him, but the payoff is so big that not even Max can resist. Later, Nick learns that Max is deep in debt to another criminal. Like Nick, Max wants to use the proceeds to clear himself. Getting Nick to agree to pull the job in Montreal isn’t as difficult as getting him to team up with Jack Teller (Edward Norton of “American X”), the guy who shopped the idea to Max in the first place. Jack bristles with ambition. He masquerades as a part-time janitor with cerebral palsy. All the guards and the head janitor treat Jack like a son, and he used their sympathy to case the Customs House. All classic crime movies have those scenes where the criminals learn everything that they need to know about who they are going to hit, such as routines, etc. This is what I mean by ‘case the joint.’

One of the chief problems with the script is the lack of a back story about how Jack learned about the object of his avarice. Jack wants to steal a 17th century French scepter smuggled into Canada in the leg of a piano, but Far Eastern insects have contaminated the piano. The authorities have decided to incinerate the piano so the bugs don’t spread their contagion. The Customs House officials discover the priceless scepter when Jack points it out as the legs blaze in the furnace. Jack aggravates Nick when he meets him in public doing his cerebral palsy act. Max and Nick argue about Jack. Nick sends his thuggish strong-arm man, Burt (Gary Farmer) to scare him off. Jack proves more resourceful than Nick imagine. Eventually, the two guys patch up their differences and decide to go forward with the heist. About the same time they learn that the Customs House officials are beefing up security. Nick turns to his hacker friend Stephen (Jamie Harrold) who lives in a dark basement at his mother’s house where he surrounds himself with computers. Clearly, the people who made “Live Free Or Die Hard” borrowed this idea with their Kevin Smith character. Anyway, Stephen comes through. “Give me a KayPro 64 and a dial tone and I can do anything,” he proclaims. They need Stephen to get them the specs for the super vault where the scepter is now stashed. More problems occur. Our anti-heroic heroes bribe a hacker inside the security firm. Nothing goes according to plan in “The Score,” and these chaotic screw-ups heighten the drama and its outcome.


Despite the obvious loopholes in the script, director Frank Oz gets away with this crime caper for the most part. He generates considerable tension during the logistical planning scenes when Nick searches for a safe entrance into the Customs House from the Montreal sewer system. Oz knows how to induce anxiety, especially when Nick and Jack have to bribe the computer hackers. Dressed from head to toe in commando garb, De Niro’s Nick Wells looks like the saboteur plumber from Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” when he breaks into the Customs House. Moviegoers who like to hear the explosions of uncooked popcorn kernels hitting the floor of a cinema during the taut crime sequence will relish this atmospheric white-knuckler. If you thrive on gratuitous nudity, sex, and violence set to the tune deafening rap music on a soundtrack, “The Score” is not for you. Jazz lovers will appreciate the cameos Mose Allison and Cassandra Wilson make in Nick’s nightclub.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE PINK PANTHER 2" (2009)

The dreadful 2006 prequel/remake of “The Pink Panther” turned out to be a travesty of a once splendid slapstick franchise about the world’s most incompetent French detective. The late British comic Peter Sellers created Inspector Jacques Clouseau back in 1963 for director Blake Edwards in the original “Pink Panther” with David Niven and Robert Wagner. Watching Sellers mangle the language while performing his silly shenanigans made for a sidesplitting experience. Steve Martin tried to imitate Clouseau’s clowning in “The Pink Panther” and for the most part stumbled through the role. Indeed, he managed to salvage a moment or two with his bumbling bravado, ridiculous accent, and a naughty word. The biggest change between Sellers’ Clouseau and Martin’s Clouseau is that Martin’s Clouseau has moments of blinding brilliance that Sellers’ Clouseau never had. Surprisingly, three years later, Steve Martin has captured the comic spirit of both Sellers and Clouseau in the lively sequel “The Pink Panther 2” (*** out of ****) and “Agent Cody Banks” director Harald Zwart keeps slapping us silly throughout this nimble, 91-minute merriment with riotous pratfalls and sight gags galore. The 2006 “Pink Panther” looked abysmal, but it coined over a $158 million worldwide. Incredibly, the far superior sequel looks absolutely fantastic, but it isn’t generating the box office receipts of its predecessor.

Like most sequels, “The Pink Panther 2” plays for bigger stakes. A mysterious thief, the Tornado, has stolen the British Magna Carta, the Italian Shroud of Turin, and the Imperial Sword of Japan. The ingenious Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber screenplay has the world authorities assembling an elite team of crack detectives to catch the elusive Tornado. Included are Italian investigator Vicenzo (Andy Garcia of “The Godfather, Part 3”), British cop Randal Pepperridge (Alfred Molina of “Spider-man 2”), and Japanese policeman Kenji (Yuki Matsuzaki). It is only a matter of time before French Chief Inspector Dreyfus (John Cleese of the Monty Python troupe) is summoned by Joubert (Geoffrey Palmer of "Tomorrow Never Dies"), his immediate superior, and ordered to add Clouseau to the team. The envious Dreyfus volunteers to take Clouseau’s place. He tells Joubert that he has Clouseau on a special assignment to safeguard Parisians. In reality, Dreyfus has banished our hero to writing tickets for parking infractions. Joubert demands that Clouseau join the dream team. Initially, Clouseau is reluctant to leave France. He fears the Tornado will take advantage of his absence and pinch the Pink Panther diamond on display in a Parisian museum. Clearly, something must have changed because the diamond was set in a ring in the previous “Pink Panther.” No sooner has Clouseau walked out of the terminal to board his plane to Rome than the word hits the airwaves about of the Pink Panther’s theft.

“The Pink Panther 2” contains many memorable gags. In a restaurant in Rome, Clouseau selects a bottle of wine for his girlfriend, Nicole (Emily Mortimer of “Scream 3”), and winds up tipping the wine rack so all the bottles cascade out. Waiters scramble everywhere to catch these falling bottles. Only one bottle hits the floor, but it doesn’t break! Just when everything seems safe, Clouseau crosses the room, steps on that wine bottle rolling across the floor, falls and throws his wine bottle into the air. Clouseau’s wine bottle shatters on a flaming dessert dish, and the entire restaurant burns down! In another scene, Clouseau tries to sneak inconspicuously around a three story villa. He climbs onto the roof but falls backwards down the chimney, crashing through three fireplaces! In a duel of wits, Clouseau and Pepperridge display their powers of deduction. They observe things about each other that they have no apparent way of knowing. As the duel concludes, Pepperridge makes a comment about Clouseau’s trip to the airport. A puzzled Clouseau wonders how Pepperridge knew about airport as he holds up the back of his hand that the passport official had stamped by accident.

The lunacy in “The Pink Panther 2” compares favorably with the better Sellers’ “Pink Panther” movies. The martial arts hand-to-hand combat scenes in his apartment are hilarious. Director Harald Zwart and his writers have cleverly contrived events in advance so you are actually given clues about the villain’s identity before Clouseau unveils the guilty party. The trouble is that unless you’re vigilant, you’ll miss this bit of foreshadowing. Jean Reno returns as Detective Ponton, Clouseau’s right hand man, who is supposed to defend himself from any of Clouseau’s unexpected attacks. You see, Clouseau has trained Ponton to be constantly vigilant, and the best way for Clouseau to test Ponton’s vigilance is to attack him without warning. When Ponton’s wife kicks his two sons and him from their house, they move in with Clouseau. Ponton’s sons teach Clouseau a trick or two about vigilance. Not surprisingly, John Cleese is a lot funnier as Chief Inspector Dreyfus than Kevin Kline was in the 2006 “Pink Panther.” Lily Tomlin shines in a small role as a overseer at police headquarters who monitors political correctness. She busts Clouseau for his sexist and racist attitude toward women and foreigners. Canadian composer Christophe Beck does an excellent job of duplicating Henry Mancini’s unforgettable theme music. The Pink Panther cartoon that opens “The Pink Panther 2” is as good as any of the original “Pink Panther” cartoons. Happily, this “Pink” doesn’t stink like its predecessor.

FILM REVIEW OF ''KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL" (1952)

“Dark Alibi” director Phil Karlson’s “Kansas City Confidential” (***1/2 out of ****) qualifies as a crisply-made, smartly-plotted, entertaining heist caper about the perfect crime. This imaginative, 1952 release from United Artists and producer Edward Small about an innocent man framed for a robbery that he didn’t commit teems with interesting characters, a seasoned cast, edgy predicaments, and a fine resolution. Good guy John Payne musters considerable credibility as the flawed protagonist who is punished for the crime, while a dream cast of classic heavies--Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, and Neville Brand—enjoy their ill-gotten gains until our hero can pay them back with interest. “Red River’s” Coleen Gray plays Payne’s love interest, but her character is strictly peripheral in the greater scheme of the action. Yes, she does figure into the plot, but she isn’t front and center like the rest of the cast, including Preston Foster as the mastermind of the a million dollar hold-up.

“Narrow Margin” lenser George E. Diskant’s moody black & white photography is first-rate, and several camera angles stand out, enhancing the thrills and chills. Rowland Brown and Harold Bruce provided the basis for the story, while Harry Essex and George Bruce penned the tightly-knit screenplay with uncredited assistance from both Karlson and Payne. Clocking in at a trim 99 minutes, “Kansas City Confidential” doesn’t squander a second and never wears out its welcome. Moreover, some commentators have described it as a film noir entry when it really isn’t film noir. The interesting thing is that Karlson’s crime thriller seems a little ahead of its time with its post-modern spin on events. The cops are portrayed as pretty ruthless and the mastermind has a back story that makes him a tragic character. All in all, “Kansas City Confidential” delivers more than the usual 1952 thriller about a robbery.

The film opens with this foreword: “In the police annuals of Kansas City are written lurid chapters of criminals apprehended and brought to punishment. But it is the purpose of this picture to expose the amazing operations of a man who conceived and executed a ‘perfect crime,’ the true solution of which is not entered in any case history, and could well be entitled ‘Kansas City Confidential.’”

The action occurs in three parts. The mastermind checks his plan. He has decided to rob an armored car as the cops tote the money sacks out to the vehicle. A florist truck usually parks near where the armored car is parked. The florist delivery man, Joe Rolfe (John Payne of “Tripoli”), parks his truck and takes flowers into a building. The mastermind, Tim Foster (Preston Foster of “Guadalcanal Diary”), has been planning the heist fastidiously as a close-up reveals a time table of events he has made. For example, he notes the times that police squad cars cruise past, the arrival and departure of the Western Florist Delivery truck as well as the Bank Armored cars. Foster has timed everything at least five times for pin-point accuracy. He has calculated that he will need between two and four minutes to pull the job. He picks three criminals, Pete Harris (Jack Elam of “The Comancheros”) a trigger-happy, chain-smoking, dice gambler; ladies man Tommy Romano (Lee Van Cleef of “High Noon”) who is a habitual criminal, and Boyd Kane (Neville Brand of “Riot in Cell Block 3”) a cop killer who chews bubble-gum.

The second part involves the bank hold-up. As Foster has planned it, the criminals slip up beside the armored car and in unless than four minutes, they appropriate the money bags and hightail with one guard snapping off a couple of rounds at them. Predictably, the Kansas City cops pull over Joe, search his florist delivery truck, and haul him off to the station for some police brutality. Eventually, the authorities discover the abandoned florist delivery truck, but by then Joe has lost his job. “Thanks for nothing,” he utters contemptuously.

We learn that Joe fought in World War II hero and saved a man’s life on Iwo Jima. Joe’s grateful pal provides Joe with a tip about Harris’ whereabouts through a third party. What Joe doesn’t realize until he catches up with shifty-eyed Jack Elam is that Foster planned the crime wearing a mask. He almost entrusted each criminal enough money to leave the country until he thinks thing have cooled down enough to divide the loot. None of them knows what Foster looks like and they don’t know what the others look like because Foster forced them to always wear masks in front of each other. “I’ve made you cop-proof and stool-pigeon proof,” Foster brags. He gives them each a tore playing card in case he doesn’t make it to the split-up. Later, Tijuana authorities get the drop on Harris as Joe and he are about to leave for the Central American hamlet of Borados. Harris tries to shoot his way out and dies. Somehow, Joe appropriates Harris’ luggage with the mask and the torn poker card that Foster gave each of them.

What sets “Kansas City Confidential” apart from most B-pictures about the perfect crime is mastermind Tim Foster’s motivation. He spent 20 years on the KCPD and he was forced to retire because of politics. He engineers this perfect crime so that he can weasel his way back into the good graces of the department. Even his daughter has figured out a way for him to get another shot at being a cop. However, Foster has gone beyond the point of no return. Nevertheless, he almost pulls it off. Tracking down Foster and company is no picnic for Joe, but he manages to clear himself in the end rather neatly. Karlson does an outstanding job pacing this little thriller and revealing only a bit at a time. The scene where Joe loses his revolver at the swimming pool and finds himself pitting against Kane and Romano in his bungalow is terrific.

Critically speaking, “Time” magazine observed that “Kansas City Confidential” “combines a ‘perfect crime’ plot with some fair-to-middling moviemaking.” However, the November 10 review added: “After a few brawls and beatings, both justice and love emerge triumphant. Obviously, the ‘confidential’ of the title does not refer to the picture’s plot, which is a very model of transparency.” Meanwhile, “The Nation” magazine on November 8, 1952, opined: “For a fairly good movie you can see “Kansas City Confidential,” which in general burglarizes another burglar movie, “The Asphalt Jungle,” adds a few wrinkles picked up from the Brink robbery, and passes over probability faster than any movie in memory. But unlike any of the above films, it tells a story with gimmicks or short cuts, and all the people involved—director Karlson, actors Elam, Van Cleef, Brand—were not only concerned with the best way to express the material on hand but obviously enjoying themselves.” “The Saturday Review” stipulated that “for all its titular hints at daring political expose, is really just another cops-and-robbers thriller, somewhat better done than most and far more absorbing than many, thanks to its taut and logical story.” “The Saturday Review” went on to say: “There are some surprisingly explicit hints at police brutality, a good deal of gratuitous violence all around. The director, Phil Karlson, keeps his action whipping along at full tilt, aided considerably by George Kiskant’s clean, imaginative camera work. “Newsweek” magazine in its December 8, 1952, review avers that after the set-up for the crime that the film slid down hill. “From this point on George Bruce’s and Harry Essex’s script loses in tension and gains in elaboration and incredibility. The picture never recaptures the cold, fast drama that director Phil Karlson got into the sinister masquerade of the earliest footage.”

Altogether, “Kansas City Confidential” is worth watching again and again.