I love heist flicks. The tension. The nailbiting. S'great. And the Heist genre has a long and rich heritage. From the recent slick n' sexy Thomas Crown Affair all the way back to the grand daddy of them all, that caper classic, Jules Dassin's Rififi.

One cannot fairly compare Frank Oz's (The voice of Fozzie Bear and the legendary Jedi knight Yoda) The Score to the high gloss artifice of Thomas Crown, nor to the sheer cinematic purity and suspense of Rififi's silent break-in. In fact, it's plot is as cliched as can be: a veteran thief "pulls one last job" and an aggressive young upstart threatens the success of the plan etc. etc. You know that formula as well as I do. But The Score brings something else to the table: a little restraint.

The Score is a decidedly low-key heist movie. No fancy pyrotechnics, no car chases, no mtv editing. Just the quiet and dedicated work of true professionals. In fact, the editing lets us just sit back and enjoy watching talented and experienced thieves doing what they do best.

Robert De Niro plays Nick, a seasoned safe-cracker who lives an otherwise quiet life as a Montreal club owner. To him, theft is not thrilling or glamorous, it's a grind; it's just a living. Nick's one hard and fast rule is never to pull a job in his home town. But when his friend and fence, Max (a portly but cheery Marlon Brando) brings him a job stealing a priceless scepter from the Montreal Customs House, Nick finally sees a chance to get out of the game once and for all. He can pay off the club and retire from crime forever.

Max has a man on the inside, an up-and-coming young thief named Jack, played flawlessly, as usual, by Edward Norton. He's employed at the Customs House as a retarded night janitor, Bryan. Jack and Nick plan meticulously; this is where The Score becomes engrossing. We are witness to the fascinating process of intelligent problem solving. Too often heist movies gloss over the process and skip to the explosions and manufactured suspense (DePalma's spectacle Mission Impossible springs to mind. They don't have a cheap-o security camera in that room? Why not just make the computer inaccessible when no one's in the room instead of making the floor sweat-sensitive? But I digress). A scenario involving respect and trust (or lack thereof) emerges as the two work together. DeNiro and Norton are at their subtle best, never overplaying, but giving you enough hints at trouble to come.

One of the slickest scenes is the payoff in a public park in exchange for vital security information. The scenes has nice dramatic tension, shows us that these guys truly know what they're doing, and gives us a preview to the friction between the two partners. But the plan hits snag after snag and Nick wants to pull out. Nick then finds out that Max is in a lot of debt to some black-clad men, so he decides to proceed.

The centerpiece of the film is, of course, the heist itself. And it's loaded with the requisite beads of sweat and deafening silences. Nick must break into a seemingly impregnable safe, avoiding a myriad of cameras and infrared beams. The two men have to work together in perfect synchronicity to pull it off and of course when the inevitable (and some contrived) events threaten the outcome, the movie is at its taut best.

But this is by no means a perfect film. Nick is a practical and imminently sensible guy; he would very likely not take this job. Oz tells us he does so out of fear for and loyalty to Max, but this does ring a bit hollow. Jack's final acts are too somewhat unbelievable and the "surprise" ending is by no means a shocking one. But I suppose I bought it for the sole reason: "How else could it end?" So the end is a ppropriate, if not entirely satisfying.

This is good ol' fashioned Hollywood entertainment. It's not Rififi, it's not high art, but this a refreshingly minimalist and pure thriller. For an opposing viewpoint, read benho's fabu revu, which inspired this one, my first. And for those heist fans out there, see my list of The Best Heist Flicks.