Gene Hackman Lifts Mamet's Heist Above Its Obvious Cliches

Gene Hackman abideth. He makes every movie seem better than it is; at least, he makes his parts of movies seem better. In Heist, a clever, straightforward genre flick that delivers pretty much what the title suggests and not much more, Hackman is surrounded by actors cut from similar cloth, including Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito and illusionist and raconteur Ricky Jay. They're all at the top of their games?notably DeVito, who plays master thief Hackman's pint-sized, double-crossing silent partner; the meaner and scuzzier DeVito is, the more fun he is, and the more willing you are to excuse his tendency to go cute and fuzzy in other people's movies.

Even Mamet's wife, Rebecca Pidgeon, is better than you expect?good enough that you might be willing to forget the fact that at least half a dozen actresses in her age range would have been more distinctive. She plays Hackman's squeeze, one of those supercool, tough-talking, sexy dames who know how to handle guns and can withstand two hours in a testosterone sauna. Maybe she's improving, or maybe she's learned to resist her director's relentless attempts to Mametize every single line and beat. Or maybe I'm just starting to get used to her, the way I'm starting to get used to those flashing, whirling logo bugs in the corner of my tv screen; no matter. Like the logo bugs, she's not going away, and if her employment is a condition of Mamet's cultural presence, I'm willing to learn to like her.

But at the end of the day, Heist is another heist movie, and I'm not sure anybody ever needs to see another one of those. The form seems all played out; the formula is as ritualized as that of the classic Western or the standard-issue boy-meets-girl romance, with less wiggle room for those who wish to upend, bend or mythologize the standard elements.

There's usually an experienced older thief (James Caan in Thief, De Niro in The Score and Heat, Sean Connery in Entrapment) who wants to do one more big job, then retire. There's a sexy young woman who has a personal relationship with the older hero and seems to be working with him, but might be setting him up for a double-cross (the Pidgeon part). There's also usually a young, smart, impulsive wannabe-master thief (In Heist, it's up-and-comer Sam Rockwell, sporting his trademark porn-star mustache) who apprentices with the hero and learns trade tricks and life lessons, and who might be up to no good. (Sometimes, as in Entrapment, the latter two stock characters may be combined, then fitted with a leather catsuit.) There are scenes of people staring into computers and tracking one another with high-tech devices and fast-talking their way past cops and security guards and saying cold-blooded things before they pop each other. The genre's like a four-door sedan. You can paint it screaming yellow and give it a vaguely European-sounding name, but that doesn't change the fact that it's the ultimate safe buy.

Mamet knows this; I suspect he chose to make Heist precisely because its components are so familiar. Familiarity sells, and this director needs a hit. His last two movies, the underappreciated Edwardian morality play The Winslow Boy and last winter's wickedly mean, inside-Hollywood satire State and Main, were clearly the work of a discerning, ambitious wordsmith who keeps improving his ability to tell stories with pictures. But nobody went to see those movies. Mamet believes in pop entertainment, and for the last 14 years he's been making intelligent, generally well-received art house pictures, but he wants to work on bigger canvases, with bigger budgets and bigger stars?just like the directors who bring his work-for-hire scripts like The Untouchables, Hoffa and Ronin (on which he did an uncredited rewrite) to the screen. As Tarantino figured out, genre is the fast track to the A-list; if you're smart, you do genre while retaining and even selling your own artistic idiosyncrasies.

Mamet, cynical? I know the mind rebels, but check out the title. The Score sounded generic, but at least it had a not-so-sly double meaning. Ed Norton, De Niro and Marlon Brando knew they weren't making another Citizen Kane; whether you thought their teamup was interesting or disappointing, it was done for media and box office reasons. Heist is an even plainer title?nearly an admission of commercial intent, like, Watch me be Mamet while raiding the box office. (If Mamet decides to make an action picture, maybe he'll call it Action.) Robert Elswit's chrome-and-gray widescreen photography has more variety and movement than typical Mamet camerawork. Perhaps Mamet is starting to realize that all the provocative control-freak rules he laid down in his nonfiction books about drama make for fine grad-school bull sessions, but they tend to straitjacket artists in the field and prevent them from becoming more than the director's puppets. Or perhaps Elswit's looseness is another concession to Mamet's desire to make a hit. Either way, it pleases the eye.

The plot? One big score before retirement, plan goes bad, double- and triple-crosses ensue, hero tries to get money back from betrayers, more double- and triple-crossing, you know the drill. The dance moves vary, but you've heard this song before. I hate giving away a twisty plot in a film that has little else beyond good acting and dialogue to recommend it, so let's just say Heist is standard Mamet with more guns?a parable of con men and suckers.

Hackman's Joe Moore builds boats; that's supposed to make him eccentric and cultured. (It also gives him a cover to launder his own money and make useful things.) DeVito's bankroller and fence, Bergman, insists Moore take on his nephew, Jimmy Silk (Rockwell), who makes a move on Joe's main squeeze, Fran (Pidgeon), who might be flirting with Jimmy to set up a double-cross of Joe, or might be pretending to flirt with Jimmy to head off a double-cross of Joe, or might be pretending to flirt to head off a double-cross as a cover for setting up a triple-cross. I'm getting dizzy, so I'll stop now.

Mamet cleverly matches his own elaborately profane dialogue to the youth audience's emotionally stunted craving for cartoon badass quips. Because Mamet isn't exactly down with modern slang, some of the kissoffs sound contrived and outdated. When Lindo's loyal buddy Bobby says, "You know why the chicken crossed the road? Because the road crossed the chicken," it's lame grandpa wit, the kind of thing that makes elementary-schoolers roll their eyes. But there are keepers. Halfway through the movie, while setting up the big heist on a stretch of road outside an airport, a curious patrolman questions Joe while his colleagues watch from the roadside. Jimmy's so nervous he looks like he's about to throw up, and he impulsively goes for his pistol; Joe's reliable sideman, Pinky (Jay), talks the kid down, assuring him, "My motherfucker's so cool, when he goes to bed, sheep count him."

Hackman's penetrating, volatile intelligence keeps infecting the material, transforming it into something less abstract and mathematically schematic than Mamet's clockwork script is willing to promise. As Joe, he's predictably rueful, tough, charming and smart (but slipping; he forgets to wear a mask during the opening robbery, exposing his identity to jewelry-store surveillance cameras). Yet there's a reality to the man's presence that ennobles the cliches. Maybe it's the actor's own history, which drapes Hackman's solid shoulders like a huntsman's jacket. He's 71 now, and he looks it, but in a good way; he carries himself with a bit of a swagger, like a long-retired military officer who stayed in shape and can still chop wood or move an air conditioner when he needs to. Like Spencer Tracy, to whom he's often compared, he has a genial, patriarchal charm; but like Tracy, he can seem a tad self-satisfied, and when somebody crosses him, look out. When angered, Hackman's voice rises to a jet-engine whine; it's the voice of authority betrayed, and whether you hear it in The French Connection or this film or Crimson Tide or the forthcoming The Royal Tenenbaums, it still conjures childlike feelings of anger, fear and shame. Few stars can still scare the hell out of people at 71; Hackman's one of them.