Review: 'Tower Heist': a skyscraper caper
Eddie Murphy as petty crook Slide in "Tower Heist", an action-comedy about working stiffs who seek revenge on the Wall Street swindler who stiffed them. Directed by Brett Ratner. In theaters on November 4, 2011. Credit: Universal Pictures/David Lee
The first real comedy of the recession, Brett Ratner's bright, brassy, thoroughly entertaining "Tower Heist" ends with an amusingly straight-faced joke. It's in the closing credits: "Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental."
It's a necessary bit of legalese, but "Tower Heist" wouldn't exist without Bernard Madoff, the securities investor who reduced many a nest egg to zero in a $60-billion Ponzi scheme. He is transformed here, almost point by point, into Arthur Shaw, a working-class kid from Queens who now turns people's savings into his classic-car collection. Even if you pretend that Shaw (a wonderfully loathsome Alan Alda) is just a generic 1-percenter, "Tower Heist" offers the delicious fantasy of symbolically pushing him off his high rise.
When Josh learns that Shaw has $20 million hidden in his apartment, he decides to pull a high-tech Robin Hood and steal it. His motley band includes dimwitted bellhop Enrique (Michael Peña); a Merrill Lynch bigwig reduced to penury, Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick); and a petty thief, Slide (Eddie Murphy). Casey Affleck plays Charlie, a knock-kneed concierge, and Téa Leoni is a hard-charging FBI agent.
The many characters crowd each other, and even the high-energy Murphy gets muffled. But the dialogue is sharp and Ratner is in his element directing an action-comedy spectacle complete with plummeting elevators, grappling hooks and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's a genuine crowd-pleaser -- for 99 percent of the crowd, at least.
Here are four more notable "heist" movies:
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