Revenge can be just as strong a motivator in caper movies as greed.
When George Clooney loses his girlfriend Julia Roberts to casino owner Andy Garcia in Ocean's Eleven, he decides to rob the guy's casino.
In The Italian Job, the need for revenge goes much deeper.
Charlie Croker (Mark Wahlberg) is a master planner who has robbed safes all over the world.
He plans a heist in Venice that's so lucrative it will allow him and his five gang members to retire in style.
It's a favourite plot device in caper movies to establish that the job the audience watches executed or planned is meant to cap a criminal's career.
That makes the stakes higher, and for Charlie those stakes are $35 million worth of gold bricks.
Charlie's gang consists of ace safecracker John Bridger (Donald Sutherland), explosive expert Left-Ear (Mos Def), get-away driver Handsome Rob (Jason Statham), computer genius Lyle (Seth Green) and the inside man Steve (Edward Norton).
Charlie and his gang plan to take the safe and its contents literally from under the noses of the men hired to guard it.
It's vastly entertaining watching how this is accomplished, and it's a great start for a film.
The heist ends with a dramatic high-speed boat chase through the canals of Venice and a deadly double-cross, which sets the next hour of the flick in motion.
Steve takes the gold and heads off to a fortress he's built himself in Los Angeles.
Without a safecracker, Charlie can never get to the gold, and the only person as skilled as John is his daughter Stella (Charlize Theron).
Stella works for safe makers, but it doesn't take all that much arm twisting to get her to seek revenge on the man who killed her father.
Strangely enough for a caper film, it doesn't take any real romancing either.
There are no hot sex scenes between Wahlberg and Theron, and only a hint of mild sexual tension. Some will find that admirable while others will undoubtedly find it disappointing.
As with Ocean's Eleven, the audience becomes privy to the detailed planning of the robbery.
It's surprisingly straight-forward, but director F. Gary Gray ensures there's always plenty of energy if not tension.
He manages to make the chase through the streets of L.A. even more fun than the one through the canals of Venice.
What's just as appealing as the intricate heists are the characters themselves.
Green is hilarious as the bitter computer geek who wants to be called The Napster, insisting his university roommate stole the concept from him while he was napping.
Statham plays the womanizer with a mixture of sly British charm and European machismo. Norton makes Steve's villainy cold and intellectual.
Wahlberg takes his cue from Clooney and plays Charlie with laid back ease.
Like Charlie, The Italian Job is appealing because it's so cool, confident and a bit cocky.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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