Heist is a 2001 crime thriller written and directed by David Mamet. The film's cast includes Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, Ricky Jay, and Rebecca Pidgeon.
Plot
Joe Moore runs a ring of professional thieves, which includes Bobby Blane, Don "Pinky" Pincus and Joe's much younger wife Fran. During a daylight robbery of a Montreal jewelry store, Joe's face is captured by a security camera. As both the picture and a witness can identify him, Joe chooses to retire from crime and plans to disappear on his sailboat with his wife, living off their share of the heist.
This doesn't sit well with Joe's fence, Mickey Bergman, who runs a legitimate garment business as a front. After accruing a number of expenses in setting up another, much more complicated robbery, Bergman decides to withhold the payment due to Joe and his crew. He insists they go through with the other job — hijacking a Swiss airplane carrying a large shipment of gold. Bergman further insists that his hot-headed nephew, Jimmy Silk, be a part of the crew.
Joe reluctantly accepts, but a series of shifting loyalties amongst thieves changes the complexity of their task. That includes Jimmy's personal interest in Joe's wife and the belief of both Bergman and Jimmy that Joe's skills are in decline.
The plane robbery is set up as a series of misdirections. Pinky poses as an airport guard while Joe, Bobby and Jimmy pose as airport security personnel. They stop the jet while pretending to be responding to an onboard emergency. They fill a van with what they take from the plane, then move the van to a rented garage on the airport grounds, where they re-brand it and call for a tow truck to have it hauled away.
Jimmy betrays the others in a bid to steal both the gold and Fran. He knocks out Joe after everyone else has left, then tells Fran that he knows Joe had changed the plan. He and Fran take the van, but Jimmy finds out that, instead of bars of gold, the hidden compartments are filled with metallic washers.
Joe avoids arrest and returns to the plane in disguise. He and Bobby remove a shipment of goods they had booked on board the same Swiss flight, which they insist now must be driven to its destination due to the plane's delay on the runway. Inside the shipment is the stolen gold, which Joe and Bobby then melt and mold into long golden rods.
A furious Bergman has his thugs apprehend Pinky, who is walking his young niece to school. Pinky discloses the plan in order to save his niece's life (but not his own). Bergman and his crew arrive at Joe's sailboat along with Jimmy and Fran, where they hold Joe at gunpoint, demanding to know: "Where's the gold?"
They notice that the railings of the boat are golden. Fran leaves with Jimmy, pleading with Bergman to give Joe some money and let him go. Bergman checks the bars. They turn out to be merely painted. Bergman counts to three, preparing to shoot Joe, when a hidden Bobby surfaces and opens fire. Bergman's men are killed. He is wounded and helpless. He asks Joe, "Don't you want to hear my last words?" Joe replies, "I just did," and shoots him dead.
Bobby gives Joe the address where to send his share. Joe waits to meet Fran with a new truck filled with gold rods. Jimmy shows up with Fran. They take the truck and the gold, Fran telling Joe: "You're the one who sent me to him."
A double-crossed Joe gets into a different truck to leave. A black bar in the truck accidentally scrapes the garage doorway, revealing a gold tint underneath. Joe lifts a tarp in the truck bed, revealing that most of the real gold rods were concealed under it. He covers the scratched rod with the tarp and drives away.
Reaction
Essentially a re-examination of Mamet's favorite device, the confidence game, the film was more of a success with critics than audiences. Roger Ebert is among the film's admirers, praising not only Mamet's trademark verbal constructions ("Everybody wants money — that's why they call it money!") and restrained approach to on-screen gunplay, but also the care that the director takes in shaping the relationships between the principals.[1]
Box office performance
In its opening weekend, the film grossed $7,823,521 in 1,891 theaters in the United States and Canada. In total it had a worldwide gross of $28,510,652, significantly lower than the film's production budget of $39 million.[2]
Cast
Notes
External links
