The Score (2001)
DIRECTOR: Frank Oz
CAST: Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, Angela Bassett
REVIEW:
The Score isn’t a classic entry in the heist movie genre, but it’s a slick little diversion that sets fairly modest goals and achieves them, gives us some interesting interplay between accomplished actors, and treads familiar ground with enough assurance to make us not mind coming along for the ride.
Nick Wells (Robert De Niro) is a middle-aged career master thief living in Montreal, on the brink of capping off his criminal career with one last big score that will pay off his jazz club and leave him financially secure to settle down for a quiet normal life with his girlfriend Diane (Angela Bassett). His fence Max (Marlon Brando) dangles a juicy carrot: a priceless gold scepter made in the 1600s for a coronation of a French queen, has been impounded in the Customs House in Nick’s own city. Nick grudgingly signs up, despite his misgivings about robbing in his own backyard, and about his uneasy team-up with Max’s inside man, young and cocky Jack Teller (Edward Norton). Over the course of complicated planning and preparations, Nick and Jack form an uneasy partnership, but anyone who thinks this “last job” is going to go 100% smoothly hasn’t seen many heist movies.
The Score isn’t hugely ambitious and it’s mostly non-violent; there’s threats, guns pointed a couple times, moments of tension, but there’s nothing nearly as dramatic as any big shootout with the police. Nick and Jack are stealing an antique from a customs house, not robbing a bank or knocking over an armored car, and the stakes feel lower than in more intense, action-heavy movies of this genre. Where its focus lies is on the details of the heist planning, and the uneasy team-up of Nick and Jack. The planning and execution of the heist is interesting. Nick breaks into a supposedly impregnable safe using ingenious methods. Jack has a clever ruse of having infiltrated the Customs House in his alter ego, a mentally challenged “charity case” called Brian, whom none of the guards pay much attention to, much less would ever suspect of carrying out a complicated robbery, and doesn’t exist on paper. There’s a little humor, like Nick’s go-to hacker (Jamie Harrold) who dwells in the dark in his mom’s basement in front of an array of monitors playing video games and screaming at his mother when she interrupts him, and does not inspire Jack’s confidence. There’s an uneasy meet-up in a park where money and computer security system access codes change hands. There’s a couple wrenches thrown in the plan, though none insurmountable, and the thieves run behind schedule and risk getting interrupted mid-heist, and just as it seems they might pull it off together, there’s another turn. It’s nothing hugely original or groundbreaking, but it’s absorbing, as in any competent heist caper. The other intriguing aspect is the dynamic between Nick and Jack. Nick is older, calm and cautious, and doesn’t believe in taking longshots. He drops veteran thief nuggets of wisdom like “talent means nothing in this game if you don’t make the right choices. There’s lots of talented people who never see the light of day anymore”, and “make a list right now of everything you want, then plan on spending the next twenty-five years getting it, piece by piece”. Jack is young, lean and hungry, cocky about his own skills, and clearly bristles when being told what to do, or at perceived disrespect. And as in some other heist capers like the same year’s Heist (starring Gene Hackman) there’s a climactic twist-within-a-twist where a cocky young criminal thinks he’s beaten the vet, and then finds he might not have done so after all.
The Score unites three generations of accomplished thespians, aging icon Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro, and up-and-comer Edward Norton, but none of the above give standout performances. De Niro and Norton are fine, but De Niro is basically playing a less violent, somewhat better-adjusted variation of his taciturn career thief from Heat, while Norton varies up the cocky Jack with a credible impression of a mentally challenged person. Meanwhile, the most impressive thing about Brando is his girth; reportedly Brando’s ego was such that he refused to be on set at the same time as director Frank Oz, and one wonders why Oz didn’t simply cast someone else for his handful of scenes (Brando isn’t blatantly phoning it in to the extent he did in Superman, but he’s not really doing anything special or irreplaceable either). Angela Bassett is relegated to the truly thankless role of Nick’s underdeveloped girlfriend, who seems superfluous except as an embodiment of the “normal life” Nick is trying to get to.
The Score doesn’t break any new ground—and follows some familiar heist movie narrative beats—but it gets the modest job done efficiently and intelligently, and goes smoothly with sure-handed acting and direction. It’s a sturdily diverting old-fashioned no-frills heist caper that gets in, gets the job done, and is on its competent if undistinguished way, and if you’re just hankering for an intelligent heist flick, you should be on your way feeling satisfied.
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