On the couch

The Heist
**
Directed by: Peter Hewitt
Starring: Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, William H Macy,
Marcia Gay Harden
If you ever wondered what well paid, successful, slightly more mature Hollywood actors do when they’ve nothing to keep them busy then The Heist (released in America as The Maiden Heist) is the film for you.

 

This knockabout caper is just the sort of nonsense that old pros like Chris Walken, Morgan Freeman and William H Macy probably love chatting about doing when they’re at the swanky gentlemen’s club sipping snifters of brandy and comparing royalty cheques. Talk about, but never do.

Well congratulations Peter Hewitt, you managed to perform the miracle of pulling both the cash and the performers together for what amounts to a fogey version of The Thomas Crown Affair by way of Ocean’s 11.

Walken stars as Roger, a security guard at a New York art museum whose days are consumed less with twitchy tourist-bothering and more with staring long and hard at his favourite painting, The Lonely Maiden. At home he’s a distracted husband to wife Rose (Marcia Gay Harden) who works long hours at a hair salon, saving tips so the two can retire to Florida.

Auld Roge is shaken out of what seems like a years’ long torpor at the news that The Maiden is to be sent, along with a number of other works, to a gallery in Denmark. His initially impotent fury is shared by his mate Charles (Morgan Freeman) who has a similar bond with one of the gallery’s works, his one being a painting of a woman with cats.

Bonded by desperation, an unwillingness to be separated from their great artistic loves and an inability to up sticks and go live in Denmark, the two start to formulate a plan to liberate the paintings, a plan that leads them to the third member of their motley crew – George (Macy) – a former marine who spends much of his time as a night watchman, nude and posing at his favourite work, a bronze sculpture of a warrior.

What follows is both silly, a bit sad and often quite funny as the old lads balance their advancing years and ties to the real world to the slightly outlandish task they have set for themselves.

Not afraid of a touch of the thoroughly bizarre every now and then, Hewitt tries to keep reality within touching distance, at least for the story, with the problems encountered throughout the film being less the John McClean kind and more the like Victor Meldrew ones.

That said, the stop motion sequence where the three lads posit different plans for robbing the museum is a lovely touch. Seeing three chess pieces creep around a cereal box museum reinforces the inerrant silliness of the geezers’ plot as well as being thoroughly fun to watch. The subsequent abseiling scene is less whimsical, however, and just plain silly.

What keeps The Heist from being an exercise in all-out nonsense is the cast. Following on from the restrained crazy of his role in 7 Psychopaths, Walken is again in fine form in his more natural, less “freak-for-hire” mode. Not that he has abandoned his roots entirely – his occasional flashes of kook are employed infrequently and to good effect.

His relationship with Rose is really where the film’s dramatic tension lies, as he is basically having an affair with the painting and trying not to let her find out. Harden plays trashy/adorable brilliantly in the Marisa Tomei style and is unfortunately underused.

Freeman and Macy, meanwhile, while less explored as characters, more than make up for it in moments stolen as only veteran actors can. From Freeman’s cat-obsessed amateur artist with an ambiguous history to Macy’s frazzled ex-soldier with a penchant for dropping trou, there’s never a dull moment when the three lads are on screen.

Unfortunately, it all seems a little insubstantial and not quite as polished as it could, or should, have been. As much as it’s a charming lark it feels like exactly that. A bit of craic the lads knocked out on a weekend and didn’t think too much about before or after.

Which is a pity because The Heist seems to have a lot more to say about getting old and really appreciating life than it really gets around to saying. The film’s final scenes are really quite clever and tie the story up in an unexpected and far more naturalistic way than might have been expected but it only hints at the depths to which the flick might have gone, if it had been given a bit more of a polish before being put into production.
You’ll smile for a while but you’ll have this forgotten soon enough. Pity. It had the potential to be great.