Rating: 
Summary: Severely lacking
Review: The Heist has a slow moving storyline that keeps the audience wondering when it's going to end. The characters for the most part are poorly developed and lack the cohesion necessary for a good film. The one aspect of this movie that could have pulled it out was the twists and turns when trying to figure out where the gold is, but unfortunately it's not quite enough to hold things together. Wait for the T.V. premier for this one.
Rating:
Summary: For the David Mamet devotee only
Review: I had forgotten that this was a Mamet work until the stilted dialogue and theatrical staging reminded me of other films by him. The viewer can see everyone acting. Hackman is better than his material here. Implausible triple crosses.
Rating: 
Summary: You gotta love it
Review: Just sit back and let the words flow over you. Wonderful words, with some great acting to boot. Hackman is fantastic, as is the rest of the cast.
Rating: 
Summary: True to form
Review: What's to like about a David Mamet film? It's his style. The characterizations are ambiguous, the plot is tied into knots, and the dialogue is dealt like a deck of cards. The Heist is no exception--Mamet sticks to the basics. The fun of watching this movie is seeing the plot unfold, keeping count of the double-crossings and hearing some rather unlikely dialogue.I felt like The Heist continued the Mamet tradition, but stretched the limits of plot turns and unlikely dialogue. Just listen to the response when someone asks how long Gene Hackman's character has been with his wife. I won't even try to quote it here. After the fourth or fifth plot turn, I started wondering about the depth of some of these characters. The Spanish Prisoner continues to be the Mamet film I hold with the highest regard. Like The Spanish Prisoner and House of Games, The Heist continues the tradition of Mamet's unique style that makes his films so unique and enjoyable.
Rating: 
Summary: House of Gold
Review: Heist (David Mamet, 2001) Beware: if you go to see a David Mamet film expecting a linear time, you're going to have problems. The mind that brought us the best con movie ever, _House of Games_, returns to the life of the small-time crook who wants to be big-time with just as much gusto as panache as before. Mantegna has been replace with flavor du jour Gene Hackman, and former Mamet wife Lindsay Crouse has been replaced with Mamet-wife du jour Rebecca Pidgeon, but otherwise, your small time con artists (Hackman, Pidgeon, Delroy Lindo, and Mamet regular Ricky Jay) are shooting for a brass ring well outside their sphere of influence. Nothing unusual. Mamet throws the monkeywrenches into the works in this one with a small-time mob boss (Danny DeVito) and his layabout nephew (Sam Rockwell, late of The Green Mile and Galaxy Quest); mob boss says that nephew must come along on the job, and crime ring leader agrees. Complications ensue. As usual with Mamet, there are many more layers than are let on at any given time. Crosses, double-crosses, and triple-crosses abound. Every character has an angle, and no one is to be trusted. Because of that, it's a movie that requires excessive attention to detail on the part of the viewer; this is likely to make the majority of the public ignore the film, but, like House of Games, it will develop a following among those who are willing to go back and watch movies four or five times to analyze everything that needs analyzed. Wonderful. Easily one of the ten best of the year. ****
Rating: 
Summary: It's great but it's not very good
Review: This opening paragraph is the same for two movie reviews. This is the year for grand failures by grand masters. Steven Spielberg for "Artificial Intelligence," David Mamet for "Heist" (worth seeing), and Ethan and Joel Coen (no h) for "The Man Who Wasn't There" (also worth seeing). Every great artist produces failures, often thinking they are his best work. Hey. Welcome to the human species. I love David Mamet, his plays, his movies, and maybe best of all, his essays, of which many are collected and available in a bookstore's drama section. They tell of his wide-ranging brilliance and his passion for cigars, whiskey, and poker. But this movie shoulda stood in his drawer. It reads as if, to cut it to a reasonable length, scenes and sections were chopped away, leaving great holes in logic and narrative. Maybe I was just too stupid to follow it but I got lost a lot. The leads, Danny Devito and Gene Hackman, are professional as usual, but this job needed more. I would guess they realized shortly after starting this project that it had nowhere to go so gave it 100 percent but no real creativity. Rebecca Pidgeon, from somewhere in the British Isles, has mastered the American accent and, even better, a certain American attitude, perhaps moxie is the word. She also wears a pair of jeans better than anyone on Planet Earth. Her character, however, has no plot purpose other than to put a female in front of the lens to dress up the image from time to time. Ms. Pidgeon, a superb actress as good as anyone except perhaps Tyne Daly or Edie Falco, is also Mrs. Mamet. Students of Mamet, note that, on occasion, usually in throwaway scenes, the Mamet stutter, his trademark dialogue, is to be heard, but throughout most of the movie, it's so-so word usage. It's a failure. But a Mamet failure, like a bad Sinatra or bad Picasso is very worth your attention. (Failures can be more instructive to the creative person because you can see the flaws, whereas in a grand success, it may be hard to define what aspect is the largest contributor to that success.) And if, like me, you're one of this country's countless screenwriting hopefuls (even if, like me, you're over the hill), --take notes! Learn to scribble in the dark.
Rating:
Summary: Go see it at a bargain matinee
Review: The Heist's choppy, ultra-cool dialogue reminded me of another movie from a few years ago, The Spanish Prisoner, so as I don't really follow movies that much and so didn't know anything about it to begin with, I looked it up on the IMBD.com database, and sure enough, both movies were written and directed by David Mamet. The Heist is okay, but I liked The Spanish Prisoner better. Mamet gets a little bit too clever with all the convoluted plot twists, and after a while it gets to be a bit too much. There is a backup plan, and a backup plan for the backup plan, and even a backup plan for a backup plan for the backup plan. I consider myself a reasonably intelligent viewer, but trying to follow this cinematic Gordian knot got a little tiresome after 2 hours. Still, it's not a bad movie, and the cast with Hackman in the lead role is certainly more than adequate. Perhaps the movie's biggest fault is that people just don't talk like this. I once saw a performance of Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot, and even that had more naturalistic dialog than this movie. But the dialog does have a certain odd fascination by itself, as the characters deliver their lines and you try to figure out what all their ultra-cool pronouncements really mean. The Heist is an interesting movie in its own way despite its flaws. Go see it at a bargain matinee or wait for the video to come out.
Rating:
Summary: The real HEIST was when they got my 5.25 for the matinee
Review: Maybe I expected too much from this movie when I saw the list of stars (who I thought did a good job overall - I really liked Pinky), but I thought this movie just drug on and on and wouldn't stop. The story was just not that interesting or innovative. There's millions of movies out just like it with some old experienced thief - blah blah blah. I think they could have made this movie about half as long. It probably would have been better, and my knees wouldn't have gotten stiff. I'd say if you have to see it, wait for it on video (if you have spare change). Or even better, cable.
Rating:
Summary: Heist is a waste of time and money
Review: My husband and I hadn't been to a movie in ages and decided this movie looked interesting. Wrong. The twists were confusing and the plot and the charactors were poorly written. We left in the middle of the movie. We thought the scene where the pilots were abducted was in poor taste after what happened Sept. 11. Gene Hackman looked too old to be playing a con man.
Rating:
Summary: Mamet can slam it! So what are you waiting for??
Review: A knockout. Mamet's best since House of Games. Even Rebecca Pidgeon, usually stiff as a board, is pretty groovy here. But the real winners are Gene Hackman and Delroy Lindo who are both tough, experienced thieves who know the score--and know how to score. The cons are in place--a by now expected Mamet kind of thing--but they move like precision clockwork and do exactly what they're supposed to--unlike The Spanish Prisoner, which seemed to bite off somewhat more than could be chewed. The dialogue is razor sharp. One of the memorable lines: "My (man) is so cool, when he sleeps, the sheep count him." Yeowch! This movie is a LOT of fun to watch. The theft of a whole lot of gold from a Swiss cargo plane is not what you normally run across in a heist movie. Nor is a drunk U.S. Customs officer. Or a minimum of violence--until the well-deserved shootout near the end. The script is tight, relying on the war of words Mamet is known for, here put to great use in the most appropriate of settings for this smart (and street smart) ultrahip writer-director. It's as though a character uses words to steal a little bit of the soul of another character he (or she) is talking to. It's not just the thieves who connive, jump, and scramble; it's the banter, the interplay, the exchange that does the same. Hugely entertaining and one of the best thrillers around. Forget Harry Potter. This is the movie to see.
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