Tower Heist
- Title: Tower Heist
- IMDB: link
There’s a long and storied tradition of heist films in cinema, and no small number of those films are draped in a dyed-in-the-wool “fuck the man” ethos. Of late, we’ve had far less anti-establishment peanut butter in our heist-film chocolate, but if there’s any time for populist payback on our silver screens, I think we can all agree that now’s as ripe a time as any.
But whereas the sadly overreaching In Time sci-fi inequality underpinnings felt like a happy accident in the midst of an otherwise unfortunate trainwreck, Brett Ratner‘s latest assault on cinema, Tower Heist, wears its blue-collar leanings on its sleeve like the world’s least subtle Livestrong bracelet. If only as much thought had gone into the pacing (and plot) of this little-guys-strike-back farce as it did for how to stuff as much working-stiff sympathy into 104 minutes, we might have had ourselves an entertaining little bout of payback by proxy.
Unfortunately, Ratner (who I hold could not have destroyed the X-Men franchise more completely than if he made Jar-Jar Dark Phoenix) seemed to take an obvious love of 70’s heist films with one serious Xanax chaser.
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Normally I’d use this paragraph to sum up the story (and throw in a few pithy comments), but quite frankly there’s precious little of interest to share. The film is not much else but the timing challenged love story between Benjamin and Daisy (played as an adult by the always wonderful Cate Blanchett), but mostly it’s a collection of vignettes filling in the spaces of when Button is too physically elderly to be with the youthful dance ingenue. Button works on a tugboat with the salty and drunk Captain Dan, uh I mean Captain Mike (Jared Harris)! Button has an affair with the bored wife of a spy! (Tilda Swinton) Button uh… hangs around a lot and starts a successful shrimp business. Wait, no. That’s the other one. In this one he kinda inherits a button factory but doesn’t do anything with it. But you get the point.
Considering the subject matter of his previous films, Darren Aronofsky could be accused of being a little obsessive/addicted himself, as his latest film takes an unflinching look at a self-proclaimed ‘broken down piece of meat’ wrestler who finds it impossible to give up life in the ring even as he comes to terms with the notion that his best days are indeed well behind him. Mickey Rourke inhabits the body of Randy ‘The Ram’ like no other role in his career, making The Wrestler not only one of the best films of the year, but elevating Rourke beyond the lost-years of the last few decades to the potential film icon he once was.
Let’s get this out of the way first and foremost: I’m rather fond of Keanu Reeves. Intellectually I realize that he is at best a limited actor, but I just like the guy. That’s probably got more than a little something to do with the fact that on one hot August night in 1999 I spent the better part of my time signing autographs for the guy at a festival show Dogstar headlined with a band I was working with. While I’m the first guy to admit that Reeves is by far a more attractive man than yours truly, the confusion was mostly due to less than attentive fans and one very impish guitar tech who insisted to every fan that yes, I was Keanu Reeves. It probably didn’t help that I was wearing all black, had close-cropped short black hair, and was easily visible backstage. So for anyone at the Kansas City River Market Dogstar show in August of 1999 still possessing an autograph signed ‘Avoid the clap! – Keanu‘ or ‘Be Cool, Stay in School! – Keanu‘ I’m terribly sorry. Also, you’re an idiot, because that day he was wearing ratty jeans, and orange t-shirt and had a 3-week beard.