The Near Midnight Meanderings On A Movie With A Microwave Meal Part 15: The Score (2001)

Hello there. Hope you're feeling today.

Robert De Niro then. Cool guy. In this movie he's not talking Italian here but occasionally in French (he's in Montreal after all). He drinks coffee seemingly by the pump and he owns a jazz restaurant. All facts which for this learner of French preferer of tea and usually avoider of jazz just shows why he's cool and I'm not.

Then again in this movie he's also a safebreaker. But a tired one. He doesn't want to do it anymore. He wants just to shack up with Angela Bassett (not just wasted but the only woman with more than one scene in the movie) and live a calm don't look behind you life.

However Marlon Brando (in his last role. And did not have the look of someone comfortable in his own skin) who plays the fence for De Niro's stolen goods makes him an offer of one last job. De Niro doesn't want to do it but eventually agrees.

Now that's not really a spoiler. After all when have you ever seen a movie where the conversation went like this?

"I want you to do one last job"

"I'm retired now. I'm not doing it"

"Ok then I'll ask George instead".

So this job. A Sceptre from France in the Montreal Customhouse. In a safe of course. Essentially a gang of two. De Niro and Edward Norton (easily the best thing in this film)  the young whippersnapper working as a disabled cleaner who's in fact "the inside man" and not disabled thankyou very much.

The rest of he film is the planning and the actual robbery (trailed it has to be said by some over the top dramatic music). That is it's biggest problem. Whilst it's not an awful movie for the fancy wrapping of it's big name stars you would have expected something more different. Instead what you have is a run of the mill caper movie variations of which I've seen hundreds of time before and I know will see hundreds of times before I die. Perhaps more sweary than most others, certainly ponced up in terms of the star names but really not that special.

Come to think about it. With these movies I've chatted about so far judging on of expectation over actual reality this is actually the worst film so far.

Until the next time.