ITALIAN JOB - Blu-ray review

It's tough to top the opening sequence from "The Italian Job," in which 35 million dollars in gold bars are coolly plucked from a Venetian villa in a "Thunderball"-style operation. It's inventive, it's stylish, and it features the suave and genial Donald Sutherland as aging safecracker John Bridger, who couldn't resist the pull of doing one last big caper with the old gang.

Compared to him, they're a bunch of youngsters who can only hope to become as savvy (and as charismatic onscreen) as their legendary former leader. The new planner, John's favorite son, Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg), knows how to dot the "i"s and cross the "t"s, but he doesn't have that cat-burglar charm or the larcenous twinkle in the eye that shows he really enjoys it as much as John and every sophisticated cat burglar who could pass for a jet-setter by day and slink across rooftops by night. The driver, Handsome Rob (Jason Statham), has a utilitarian smoothness that enables him to pick up girls, but not a blanket savoir faire. Lyle (Seth Green) is a computer geek who can take over a city's entire stoplight program or calculate which of a half dozen armored cars is carrying the load of gold, but he's way too self-congratulatory. Cool is what he does, not who he is. Then there's demolitions expert Left Ear (Mos Def), who's funny and charismatic in a comic relief sort of way. That leaves Steve (Edward Norton), who seems just as eager to shoot his way to riches and seems lacking in both imagination and flair. All of which is to say that compared to John Bridger, none of these guys has the screen presence to heist an audience's interest every time they're in front of the camera.

Too bad, then, that we lose Sutherland so early in the film. We also leave Europe and all that exotic scenery that's evocative of a James Bond adventure. In short order, dramatic shots of Venice and the Austrian Alps give way to the familiarity of traffic-stalled Los Angeles. In the U.S., "The Italian Job" turns out to be a story of calculated revenge and reclamation. But to the credit of writers Donna and Wayne Powers and director F. Gary Gray, they manage to keep the momentum going so that despite the visual and stylistic losses, "The Italian Job" is still an engaging recovery-and-retribution caper film.

With Bridger dead and the others presumed dead, Steve is living large--watching his large-screen TV and hitting on the cable lady, who just happens to be Bridger's daughter, Stella (Charlize Theron), working undercover with the old gang. They plot how to get around the vicious guard dogs, the electronic sentries, the armed guards, and the adjustments Steve makes when Stella slips and says a phrase he's only heard once before . . . from Bridger. With Steve on to them and the element of surprise gone, "The Italian Job" becomes a cat-and-mouse thriller in which recovering the gold isn't nearly as important as paying Steve back for killing John and trying to whack them. Bring in the local Russian mafia, who become involved when Steve tries to cash in a few of those gold bars, and you've got a fun (if familiar) payback film.

If you like action and stunt-driving but you're not all that crazy about blood and violence, this is a good movie for you. Not one, but three Mini Coopers are driven like mad little toys through the city and down the city's subway and sewer systems, and a helicopter chase is thrown in for good measure. But these chases feel more real because there isn't a fiery explosion every fifteen feet. How often do you see freeway accidents in which vehicles actually burst into flame, as if they were carrying cargoes of high explosives? That doesn't happen here. The emphasis is on the driving and the chase, and that too is refreshing.

Theron feels surprisingly out of her element as a safecracker who learned from the best. As a legitimate businesswoman who's used her skills to help police, she takes to the "gang" awfully fast. And once with them, she doesn't even balk at the crazy evasive driving. In truth, all the actors said that Theron was the best driver among them, but in this role and with these guys surrounding her, she's not nearly as comfortable asserting her character as she is in other films.

All that said, "The Italian Job" is still a fun popcorn movie that I enjoyed from start to finish. You could see the ending coming, but hey, it was still worth seeing old Steve get his come-uppance.

Video:
"The Italian Job" looks great in 1080p High Definition (2.35:1 aspect ratio), with nice black levels and decent color saturation making the picture pleasing on the eyes. The level of detail is fantastic, even in dark corners in the underwater scenes. No complaints here.

Audio:
Same with the audio, which is robust and booming. The jazzy musical backdrop is so important to modern caper flicks, and so the sound carries even greater weight than it does in other films. Here, I'm happy to report, the sound is bright and slightly brassy, with Dolby Digital English 5.1 DTS the preferred option (English, French, and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 are the others), with subtitles in English, French, Spanish, and English SDH for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. Again, no complaints.

Extras:
If you're looking for commentaries, there are none to be found. The focus is on driving in the movie, so predictably the focus on the bonus features would be on the same. There's "Pedal to the Metal: The Making of 'The Italian Job'," "The Mighty Minis of 'The Italian Job'," "'The Italian Job' Driving School," and "High Octane: Stunts from 'The Italian Job'," along with several deleted scenes, an HD theatrical trailer, and a brief making-of feature. All of them will appeal to fans of stunt driving, but there's not the usual breadth of behind-the-scenes filmmaking we're accustomed to seeing.

Bottom Line:
It's formulaic, but this remake of "The Italian Job" actually has more style and crisper pacing throughout than the 1969 Michael Caine original, which was set in Turin, not Venice. As pale as these characters are compared to Sutherland, Caine had an even blander bunch to work with. And when you look at this one in the rear-view mirror, the revenge and recovery plot wasn't a bad choice at all. It's just too bad that Steve couldn't have settled somewhere more exotic than L.A.