the audience applauded

Simply Perfect

Good movie but grossly overrated

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

An aging thief (Robert DeNiro) hopes to retire and live off his ill-gotten wealth when a young kid (Edward Norton) convinces him into doing one last heist.The strength of this film is having three generations of great actors in it: Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro and Edward Norton. I am not sure how Norton can be called a "young kid", but I did not write the plot summary. Regardless of the film, this is a great line-up (Angela Bassett is a nice touch, too).The plot is good, with a very different sort of heist. I do feel it could have been whittled down, though. At over two hours, the pace is not quite slow, but certainly not as speedy as we might expect from a crime picture. A few scenes could have been cut or trimmed to get this down to a shorter running time. But, still a good film regardless.

It's so rare to see heavily hyped or fabled "dream teams" of actors or actresses in films be successful, let alone play out, but the pairing of three generations of incredible method actors Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, and Marlon Brando in Frank Oz's The Score is something truly noteworthy. For one, you got two different faces of Don Vito Corleone coming together for the first and only time on screen in the same motion picture to deliver roles in which they nestle themselves so comfortably. Then there's Edward Norton, easily the underdog or the unassuming soul up against two indisputable acting greats who still manages to hold his own ground and, in some ways, echo the sentiments of these two veterans in their early days.The Score's relative obscurity in the modern day is baffling because this is a film that is precisely the kind of film that isn't made anymore, and if it is, it's made to further along an actor's career or ubiquity, meaning the exterior quality of the picture generally suffers or the budget is so pathetically low that any hope to witness a shred of realism is a lost cause. This is a tried and true heist film, taking a liberal two hours to really formulate its story, the motivations of its characters, their personalities, and their plans before plunging them into a mission that is essentially a field of landmines waiting to be tripped by the wrong move. Have fun and good luck.Nick Wells (Robert De Niro) is our main character, an aging crook who has made a comfortable living for him and his lover Diane (Angela Bassett) by working for his boss Max (Marlon Brando). Of course, just as Nick's about to hang up his hat and enjoy retirement with Diane, Max contacts him for one last job because no shyster, hit-man, or CIA agent can rest easy without one more job that's impossible to carry out. Max informs Nick of a job that would result in a $4 million payoff for him if he were able to steal a sceptre, a priceless national treasure belonging to France. The sceptre is hidden inside the leg of an antique piano, which was smuggled through Canada into the United States. Eventually, it was discovered and now lies in the heavily secured basement of the Montréal Customs House.Nick must work with Jack Teller (Edward Norton), a young, ambitious slickster who has managed to infiltrate the Customs House by pretending to be a mentally disabled janitor named Brian. Nick is furious to learn he is not only working with someone on the job, but someone he has never met prior to this job and someone he's unsure if he can trust. However, Max's increasing debt and forces Nick to continue to take on the job and work with Jack to obtain the beloved sceptre.The Score's relatively basic plot is enough to hook virtually any fan of crime dramas in from the beginning, but the real treat is the narrative craft the trio of writers (Scott Marshall Smith, Daniel E. Taylor, and Kario Salem) have cooked up. Rather than relying on a series of banal subplots, worthless characters, or, worst of all, a convoluted plot that disconnects the viewer just as quickly as it could've grabbed them, the writers work to keep The Score rooted in being precisely what it should be - a heist film with shady characters with self-centered ideologies with the element of deception being so present it disappears quite frequently amidst what appears to be complete honesty amongst the characters.Yet, despite this narrative simplicity, The Score wouldn't be a fraction of what it is without the immense amount of talent here. De Niro, during the time he was starting to exit the crime dramas and the loftier dramatic roles for roles that required a bit less effort and complexity, proves once again why he's hailed as an American great. The mannered sensibilities he conveys for Nick are nothing shy of believable, and just the way in which he speaks reflects a seasoned veteran of the crime field. Brando, in the limited scenes he's in, always finds ways to captive thanks to his soft-spoken aura and his character's ability to persuade. Seeing De Niro and Brando work off of one another, especially in one later scene that takes place in a pool, is a rousing good time.Then there's Norton who, as stated, will inevitably get the short end of the praise-stick with the two veterans commanding the screen. However, Norton gets at least three times as much screen time as Brando here and achieves the greatest goal of all when bearing that kind of pressure; never did I once wish that Brando's character was De Niro's character's sidekick whilst watching the film. Norton stands his ground here, being a smug, dictating soul one minute and a charismatic charmer the next. This duality proves that, even at a young age, Norton knew the kind of character he could play, and the fact that he played alongside two great men without slipping up is something I'm sure even more seasoned actors would have a difficult time doing.Finally, Rob Hahn's gloomy, industrial cinematography works wonders for the film as well, providing the picture with a refined sleekness that breeds corporate ugliness rather quickly. Any film that can work off that in addition to balancing the rich talents of three generations of performers and keep a straight-forward story deserves immense credit in my mind and The Score creates something from very little throughout the course of its runtime.

I saw a show I think on Discovery channel, supposedly for debunking scientific Hoax's and Myths in movies, where this experiment was tried on an actual safe, and failed miserably, and hence judged as scientifically unsound as per their evaluation, but not from what I can tell.Water was always designed by God as a coolant. It was intended to douche, to calm and to put out fires, not intended to fuel, to enrage, to exacerbate and to assist fires. Water is creative. Water nourishes and gives life. Water is not destructive. Water has a high boiling point. It is not even flammable.Having said that, there is nothing wrong with that idea which is sound in theory. Steam boilers and Pressure cookers have been known to blow a pressure valve all the time. Hydraulic pressure systems and pumps are used all the time, but the compressibility of liquids and the expansion of gases is different for different liquids and and for different gases, thus the pressure they can exert is also different. But water again is not intended to be destructive. Water vapor and steam will not generate enough pressure to blow up anything. But all flammable liquids which are the creation and the work of the Devil will. If you pour even a decent amount of gasoline or petrol in the safe and just ignite it with a spark, forget dynamiting it, that will certainly blow up the safe, no matter how thick walled or how thin walled, no matter how sealed or how unsealed it is.

Nick Wells (Robert De Niro) is an experienced professional thief and has his eyes on retiring from the game and settling down. However, when Max (Marlon Brando), a long time acquaintance, comes to Nick with details of a score that is worth millions, Nick decides to do this one last job. The reward...a priceless French scepter which is being kept under lock & key at the Montreal Customs House. Jack Teller (Ed Norton) is Max's inside man for the job and has been working at the Customs House as a mentally challenged man who goes by the name of Brian. Working together, they have to put aside any differences they have to enable them to pull off the biggest heist they have ever done.I first saw The Score when it was released 13 years ago and it may not be the most original movie out there - a heist movie with various plot twists & turns and trust issues between the main characters - but that doesn't stop it from being a great movie.The pace is good and even though there are a fewer, shall we say, slower moments to break up the main story, they are necessary and they don't ruin the overall pace of the film. The story develops nicely as the film goes on, building up suspense and tension for the main heist scenes.De Niro and Norton are excellent together here, especially when Norton plays his two characters going from Jack to Brian and back again. De Niro plays these parts superbly also (well, he plays any part superbly really) and plays them in such a way that even when his character isn't saying anything, you can see that he's calculating things out instead of just sitting there with a blank look on his face.Overall, this movie is a must watch and if you love heist movies and movies like Ronin, Heat, and Usual Suspects then you will love The Score.