*** (out of ****)
Starring Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, Angela Bassett, and Mark Boone Junior.
Directed by Frank Oz.
2001, R
There are plenty of reasons why the same plots crop up again and again in films, year after year. Among the bad reasons: studios are timid and cautious, and writers are lazy. Among the good reasons: we like seeing the same thing every now and then, as long as it’s done well. “The Score” is one of the good reasons.
To find something original in “The Score” would be difficult. To find something done badly in “The Score” would be as difficult. This film is about a robbery, pure and simple. It’s about characters confronting an obstacle, thinking real hard about how to overcome it, and being introduced to new obstacles just when they think things are about to get easy. Suspense builds as to whether or not they will succeed. “The Score” shows just about everything we need to know to believe that these men can rob what they need to rob. We see their equipment, hear their plans, and are shown every step. With superb direction and equally superb acting nothing becomes tedious and nothing is rushed. The mechanics of the film are as deliberate and well-timed as the characters in it and the plan they make. I’m still in awe at how well “The Score” unfolds, how neatly the pieces fit. It is quite the well-oiled machine.
The story is simple but told fresh: De Niro is the aging thief, more professional than most people on the legitimate side of the law, and about to pull his last job. He played similar roles in Michael Mann’s “Heat” (1995) and John Frankenheimer’s “Ronin,” (1998) but “Heat” is a three-hour parable on loneliness, in which the subplots are the plot, whereas “The Score” is like “Heat’s” two-hour mainstream, plot-intensive cousin. In “Ronin” the detachment and sadness felt by De Niro’s former spy is as palpable as its own character, but “The Score” is not so lonely and existential. Brando is a crime boss who sells De Niro’s stolen merchandise and sets him up with new jobs. Brando is fun to watch because, like the movie itself, he is not ambitious and has no illusions as to what he should be. He sticks to the character, who is a waddling way-over-the-hill fellow who may once have been frightening but is now a bit finicky and whiny and almost to that age where he thinks everything he says is a pearl of wisdom. Norton is the new guy, who talks a lot about respect, a word that does not once grace the lips of the two older men. He is almost the perfect student: he watches everything, takes it all in, is enthusiastic without being out-of-control, and asks questions when he is confused, but unlike the perfect student something secret is brewing in him. Together the three of them plot to rob a customs house. The more they plan, the tighter the security gets.
The dynamics among the three men are flawless. We can almost imagine them as being the same person at three different stages in life, excepting a few different choices. We can interchange them in our minds and wonder how events in “The Score” might transpire differently if their positions were altered. The plot, while definitely not lazy, moves comfortably enough for us to wonder these things. But the thieves, like the movie, stay on the robbery, and there isn’t time spent on chit-chat among them. De Niro and Brando know each other too well to spend time making dialogue, and De Niro and Norton have little interest in knowing each other outside a professional relationship. They have only enough non-business conversation to know they don’t want to put forth the effort to make any more.
Everything builds toward the robbery. By that point we know the customs house as well as the characters. We may not know the names of the guards but we know their faces. We see where things go wrong and things go right. None of the mechanics appear to be kept from us and nothing is smothered in excessive dialogue. We like De Niro along the way not so much because we think he’s a good man deep down but because he is so patient, so resigned, so wise even though he seems helpless in his place in life. We like Brando because he focuses on the job at hand even while every word seems to lead his mind somewhere else. And we want the robbery to turn out well for them because we want to see the mechanism work all the way to the end. I won’t spoil how things go, except to say there are no car chases and no gunfights. So many action movies want to blow up the world and be the next “Die Hard,” (1988) so many want to have endlessly-yacking characters and vague, convoluted plots involving stolen drugs and crime bosses and be the next “Pulp Fiction” (1994). “The Score” is content to be what it is, from the direction to the story to the acting, it is a group of interesting characters out to overcome an obstacle, and it gets no complaints from me. The machine works well, all the way to the end.
Copyright 2002 by Friday & Saturday Night