Tower Heist (2011)

Better Late Then Never

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Man, who wouldnt love to see a corrupt banker get conned at his own fraudster game! In Tower Heist its payback time for the hardworking people who get ripped off from their pension money by a sleezy banker. Ben Stiller, Mathew Broderick, Casey Affleck and Eddie Murphy, what a superb and hilarious comedy cast! Great actionscenes, hilarious dialogues with a plot that puts a smile on your face and keeps you guessing...Tower Heist is for all ages, if you want to have a good time and crack up laughing with your kids or with your granny. Numerous scenes are copied out of great action movies (Oceans Eleven, Die Hard, Speed,French Connection). All done tongue in cheek, very classy. Lovely action comedy with a revenge theme ! They dont come any better than this!

"Tower Heist" starts fine: Ben Stiller is the general manager of a posh New York apartment building, who having found out that he had turned over all of the staff's pension monies to an alleged swindler (Alan Alda), plans an elaborate heist to steal the money back. The movie then follows the usual heist trajectory: assemble the team, plan the job, deal with the usual complications (in this case comic), hit the target... To this point, the film is a pretty good light-weight heist-comedy. Then there is a 'plot twist' and the last third of the movie is just stupid. Any further discussions would contain major spoilers, so I'll leave it at that.

I honestly never expected that Eddie Murphy was going to play as a gangster criminal in this. He usually plays cheery good guys who plan to save the world but not this time! I found it interesting that big legends like himself, Ben Stiller and Matthew Brockerick were gonna be teaming up altogether by taking on a criminal risk. As they say, not all good guys have to be always act good all the time! I was so annoyed that Stillers character in the end had to be jailed because of stealing his corrupted bosses' gold car. I would imagine that all the people involved including Eddie Murphy's character, would need to be in jail for a couple of years. I found that very odd really but hey, it didn't make me feel put out by the movie at all! I'm glad that I got to have watched this movie by accident. With the good action and a taste of comedy in this, I give this movie a rating 8/10!

(60%) Very much a Brett Ratner movie which is both a good and a not so good thing. Good in that the guy does at least know the nuts and bolts of how to direct, and for a simple movie such as this non-fussy, yet solid direction is perfectly fine. Also the movie is fun and entertaining to watch even when there isn't really a whole lot going on. The not so good comes from the script needing a couple of extra re- writes to tighten it up a little because there are a couple of scenes that don't really have any pay-off (when the crew are on the roof after Eddie Murphy locks them out is in particular a sign that more work was needed), and just a few extra laughs would have made this a much stronger film overall. It's good to see Murphy in something decent, even if he his underused somewhat, but Stiller is such a strait man in this that he hardly registers as a comedic character at all. Overall an enjoyable little watch that has catch if you can all over it.