Tower Heist
2nd November 2011. Location: Cinema
Although the trailer makes it look a little whacky, most of the performances in Brett Ratner's Tower Heist are fairly understated. Sure, Eddie Murphy does his wide-eyed-shrieky thing a bit, and it's hard not to be a little slapstick when you've got a Ferarri winched over the edge of a skyscraper while the Thanksgiving Day parade trundles beneath unaware, but considering the film is constantly amusing, it's got a muted tension to it.
I daresay some of that's down to the subject matter in the current financial climate, and each member of he audience wondering what they'd do if a rogue investor swindled them out of every penny they've saved. And to his credit, Alan Alda doesn't pantomime his villain up at all; he's slimy, sure, but only in the way you see regularly on news and current affairs programmes.
Hark at me, making this all serious! Tower Heist is a very entertaining film. It's fast-paced to start with, and then slows to a more manageable level, but it doesn't fail to engage at all. A borderline-farcical crescendo gives way to a satisfying ending without being too clichéd. Ben Stiller reins in his comic-exasperation, while Matthew Broderick and Téa Leoni quite happily take a back seat to Stiller and Murphy's antagonistic double-act.
It's better than I was expecting it to be. All in all, worth a gander.
Try not to think too hard about the maximum weight capacity of your average elevator, and you'll be fine.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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