Tower Heist Review

Tower Heist


Release Date: 26th December 2011 - Australia


Production Companies
Universal Pictures
Imagine Entertainment
Relativity Media (in association with)
Rat Entertainment

Dentsu (in association with)

Distribution
Universal Pictures Australia


Genre: Comedy

Rating: M

Runtime: 100 minutes


Budget: $85,000,000

Box Office Gross: $152,930,623
(Worldwide)


Plot Summary
Ben Stiller and Eddie
Murphy lead an all-star
cast in this hilarious
comedy caper about a
luxury condo manager
who leads a staff of
workers to seek pay-
back on the Wall Street
swindler who defrauded
them. With only days
until the billionaire gets
away with the perfect
crime, the unlikely
crew of amateur thieves
enlists the help of petty
crook Slide to steal the
$20 million they're sure
is hidden in the penthouse.


Cast
Ben Stiller - Josh Kovaks
Eddie Murphy - Slide
Casey Affleck - Charlie
Alan Alda - Arthur Shaw
Matthew Broderick - Mr. Fitzhugh
Stephen Henderson - Lester
Judd Hirsch - Mr. Simon
Tea Leoni - Special Agent Claire Denham
Michael Pena - Enrique Dev'Reaux
Gabourey Sidibe - Odessa
Nina Arianda - Miss Iovenko
Marcia Jean Kurtz - Rose
Juan Carlos Hernandez - Manuel
Harry O'Reilly - Special Agent Dansk
Peter Van Wagner - Marty Klein Esq.
Zeljko Ivanek - Director Mazin
Jessica Szohr - Sasha
Robert Downey Sr. - Judge Ramos

Crew
Director - Brett Ratner
Based on Concept - Eric Ehrenhaus
Story - Adam Cooper and Bill Collage
Story/Screenplay - Ted Griffin
Screenplay - Jeff Nathanson

Unit Production Manager/
Executive Producer - Bill Carraro
Executive Producer - Karen Kehela Sherwood
Producers - Eddie Murphy,
Brian Grazer and Kim Roth
Production Designer - Kristi Zea
Costume Designer - Sarah Edwards
Director of Photography - Dante Spinotti
Second Unit Director/Stunt Player - G.A. Aguilar
Stunt Coordinator - Jery Hewitt
Special Effects Coordinator - Steven Kirshoff

Visual Effects Supervisors - Mark Russell and
Mohummed Yusef
Visual Effects Producer - Ginger Theisen
Visual Effects Consultant - Adam Howard
Film Editor - Mark Helfrich
Music - Christophe Beck

Review

The year of 2011 ended the holiday season with the fun-filled and ordinary caper comedy of 'TOWER HEIST'. I have finally set some time aside to indulge in this comedy which I'm not gonna lie, I did my hopes up for. It certainly wasn't as clever and elaborate as other classic heist movies that have been done, such as the original, remake and its sequels of 'Ocean's Eleven', 'Inception' and later ones like 'Now You See Me'. The storyline is tried, exhausted and has been done too many times before to be of any real interest. Probably because the writers are running out of ideas mostly. Some aspects of this movie are appealing, particularly certain scenes of comedy for example, a funny scene where a hotel maid rams a trolley into a security agent and knocks him out clean. Unfortunately, the amusing scenes in this movie are just too few and scarce. The other flaw with this film is the bad pacing where it moves along too slowly and this causes you to lose interest.

'TOWER HEIST' does bring a stellar star cast of leading ensembles, comedy film buffs will be happy to see some of their favourite comedic actors all together in this film. The actors all deliver performances which are commendable especially Eddie Murphy is quite simply in one word "hilarious" in anything that he ever does. The director Brett Ratner is well known for doing action/comedy and usually he does it very well, but maybe he's losing his touch.

The problem with this movie is it is just not very memorable, if I reflect back on the movie I can't really remember any standout scenes with exception of just a few. This is a movie that I would not be motivated watch again. If you like heist movies, 'OCEAN'S ELEVEN' is the mother of all features of this sub-genre.

Star rating: (6/10) Fair Movie

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