Friday, Nov. 9, 2001 | 9:50 a.m.
"You're too hip to be happy," Danny DeVito snarls at Gene Hackman late in David Mamet's appropriately dubbed "Heist." I chuckled at the line, only later realizing that in the context of the scene, it made no sense whatsoever. Much of "Heist" follows suit, with dialogue so dazzling as to blind the viewer to the fact that there's not much going on. Tell me: Who just got robbed?
Perhaps no one. The way the actors coil themselves around Mamet's dialogue partially makes up for a thin plot and an ending you can spot from 40 minutes out. Delroy Lindo, Ricky Jay and Sam Rockwell fully inhabit their characters, pushing them insistently into the real world, away from Mamet's wall of talk. These three know how to shut up and look around at what they've gotten themselves into. They're too good to be gabby.
Hackman plays Joe Moore, a tough but tired hi-tech thief who wants to take his spoils and retire. He's been captured on tape in the middle of a robbery ("I'm burnt") and wants to get out of the game before he's popped. His financial partner, Bergman (DeVito), has other ideas: He wants Hackman's crew to do one last job, and sends his arrogant nephew Jimmy Silk (Rockwell) along to make sure the job gets done and he isn't cheated out of his share.
Greater enterprises have been set up with less, but Mamet is undone by his own trademarks. Anyone who's seen Mamet's films knows that he often uses his real-life spouse, Rebecca Pidgeon, as the linchpin upon which the plot revolves. She's the only significant female character in the film: Will she play both sides? Guess.
Another Mamet perennial, Ricky Jay, proves the real center of this universe. Looking at the plans for the big job, he enthuses: "Cute as a pail of kittens." His bemused demeanor protects him, just as Hackman's gruffness saves his bacon. When it's challenged, you immediately sink into his shoes, and feel the weight of his troubles and responsibilities. The film could have used much more of him.
Delroy Lindo plays Hackman's friend Bobby Blane as Samuel L. Jackson -- a towering case of bad news who seems impervious to bullets. He's the polar opposite of Rockwell, who's so fragile and stupid and insistent that you wonder why the other characters, Hackman especially, hold back from rolling him in a ditch somewhere. It would have been interesting to see them try, anyway -- Rockwell plays Silk as reptile, always managing to scurry off the highway before he's flattened.
Hackman handles his role ably, but he's played it before -- Joe Moore is assembled, Frankenstein-like, from Harry Caul, Lex Luthor, Bill Daggett and nearly every other brainy tough-guy he's brought to the screen. Likewise DeVito: He could throw this gangster shade in his sleep.
But when all is said and done, you haven't lost that much from viewing "Heist" -- and you've gained the ability to describe yourself as "someone so cool, when you go to bed, the sheep count me." At matinee prices, it's practically a steal.
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