Movie Review: The Italian Job

By CHRISTOPHER J. ORTIZ
The Rocky Mountain Collegian, Colorado State University

The Italian Job, Paramount Pictures

A remake from the original 1969 film of the same name, the movie concerns itself with a bunch of professional thieves, Mark Wahlberg, Jason Statham, Seth Green and Mos Def, who are out to get the guy who backstabbed them with the help of the always-gorgeous Charlize Theron who plays Stella, a lock picker who decides to join the crew to get revenge on the guy who murdered her father (Donald Sutherland). Heard this plot a dozen times in movies? Probably, but what makes the movie memorable is the excitement watching this team carry out their scheme.
In a breakout role, Seth Green plays Lyle, a computer whiz claims that he was the guy who invented the mp3-swapping program Napster. Statham and Def also stand out in their roles as a dashing get-to-guy Rob and a half-deaf explosions expert Left-Ear, respectively. In fact, the entire casts shines including Theron who steals every scene she is in and even Edward Norton (who I argue is THE actor of this generation) does the most he can playing a generic greedy bad guy, Steve, who did not even want to do this movie but was forced to in order to fulfill a contract. Everyone shines except leading man Wahlberg who I forgot half the time what he was doing in this movie. The crew could have easily pulled off the mission without his flat lines and meager acting. The romance between him and Theron is flatline throughout every attempt but don't let it get you down, you'll be enjoying yourself getting caught up in all the excitement the rest of the characters are having in their super-cool BMW Mini's.
In a summer of car movies which use computer generated images in every shot and depend on blue screens and ILM to carry the movie, Italian Job said "no" and shot the entire movie without CGI, just like they did in the old days, and it shows.

B