MYST #4

The Italian Job

I was having a pretty boring and tired day so I wanted to watch something entertaining and not too serious for my MYST. Once I came across The Italian Job I knew that was the movie I had to watch. It was one of my favorite movies as a kid and I hadn't of seen it in at least a few years so I thought it would be a good one to do a MYST post on.

The Italian Job is about a group of friends, who, after stealing 35 million dollars worth of gold from Italian gangsters in the city of Venice, are betrayed by one of their crew members, Steve (Edward Norton) . Steve kills John, their beloved leader and father-figure of the group and steals all of the gold. Thinking he had also killed off the rest of the crew, Steve goes on to live his now wealthy life in the city of Los Angeles. After locating Steve, Charlie (Mark Wahlberg) reassembles his group of friends and also recruits Johns daughter to help them get revenge. The movie revolves around their preparation and planning of stealing the gold back from Steve; not for the money but simply to avenge Johns death. Although the movie revolves around the story of a heist, its really more about a group of friends and their intention to get back at the man who killed John. If your not looking for something too serious, its an entertaining and fun watch with a good cast. (Jason Stathom, Charlize Theron, Seth Green, and Mos Def also star in it)

2 scenes in the movie which really stood out to me were the scenes in which they were cracking the safe codes. The first one came at the beginning of the movie when they are underwater cracking the safe in Venice. The camera cuts back and forth from the extremely calm and nerve racking setting of John trying to crack the code to the ensuing police chase which is going on outside through the canals and alleys of the city. The scene cuts back and forth between these 2 a lot and it helped create a lot of suspense. It was also interesting because it showed that both events, which were happening simultaneously, were seemingly equally suspenseful even though one was a police chase and the other was very calm, still, and quiet. This is also seen in the end of the movie when Johns daughter is trying to crack Steve's safe. As she is in the process, the camera once again cuts back and forth between the safe and the ensuing chaos of the men racing towards the safe to stop her. It was very interesting how the director chose to do this with both scenes and it really added a suspensful "are they gonna make it" feeling to both.

Im glad I decided to watch this movie. It was a nice throwback to one of my favorite movies as kid and I would recommend this movie to anyone looking for a good heist movie. 4/5 stars