Saturday, October 20, 2012

Movie Review - Tower Heist

This movie is like almost like an Ocean's Eleven but with a load of crazy silliness mixed together with a little bit of heart.  The movie is Tower Heist, starting Ben Stiller, Matthew Broderick, and Eddie Murphy.

Josh Kovaks (Ben Stiller) is at the top of his game managing The Tower, a prestigious apartment complex in New York City.  Very quickly though his world gets turned upside down.  Josh is talking with Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) a big time investment broker in the beginning of the movie.  Josh and Arthur are fairly close given that Arthur lives in the building and Josh takes care of his every need.  Josh sees Arthur being stuffed into the back of a work truck and springs into action locking down The Tower.  Josh then personally chases down the truck when he is clotheslined by Special Agent Claire Denham (Téa Leoni) and the van is stopped by the FBI.  This is where we find out that Arthur Shaw is wanted for fraud and has defrauded all of his investors of their money.

The plot thickens when we find out that Josh had asked Arthur Shaw to invest the  pension funds of all the workers at The Tower.  Feeling personally responsible for this Josh hatches a scheme, why not steal the running money that he has stashed in his apartment.  He is pretty sure he knows where the safe is but he needs a team to pull off the job.  This is where the movie really starts to get interesting.  Josh recruits the biggest bunch of misfits that you could imagine to steal 20 million from a high profile target who is being protected by the FBI.

Ben Stiller does an amazing job in this film.  In the beginning of the film he is an overly professional guy who takes nothing personally and lives to server the residents of building.  Once his tough exterior starts to chip away you then get to see the real character underneath.  He could care less about the residents and completely about the staff who he has sworn to settle up with.  The transformation is pretty cool when you are watching it.

Alan Alda is fantastic as the hyper intelligent cold calculating prick Arthur Shaw.  His portrayal of the character make you really want to see him get it in the end.  The fact that he can elicit such an emotional response proves that he is a great actor.

Matthew Broderick is simply amazing in this role of Mr. Fitzhugh the out of work down on his luck stressed out financial manager.  In the film they mention he worked at Goldman Sachs handling their money.  He is very smart but also incredibly afraid of everything.

Eddie Murphy preforms a very exuberant dirty handed bad guy as Slide.  The way that Eddie manages to bring a little bit of humor to the role is excellent.  There is a great scene when Josh and Slide meet for the first time that had me laughing because of the way Stiller and Murphy work together.

The special effects were really well done.  It's not real obvious but there are certainly many scenes with special effects in them.  You can tell that they really put the extra money if for this one.  There is a scene where Mr. Fitzhugh is hanging off a building and it looks very believable.

All of the costumes are very appropriate for each character.  I would expect this of any movie that I watch.  There is a very wide variety of costumes to cover in the movie as well.  You have Shaw, rich and pretentious, Slide streetwise thug, Mr. Fitzhugh, business casual, and Josh who goes from expensive suits to causal dress.  It was all put together quite well.

The dialog always seemed very natural and not forced.  This shows a good writer at the helm of the ship.  When they can pull off this casual competence with the dialog it makes for a better film.

I rate this film five out of five smiley Mike heads.  It has humor, style, imagination, and action.  What's not to like, I highly suggest this film to anyone.  It seems like the producers actually cared when they created this film, and it shows.


2 comments:

  1. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie, also. Lately, anything with Eddie Murphy's name across the top is a movie I'd pass on. He hasn't done much good lately. But this movie was hilarious, and pretty damn entertaining! Dave and I are fans! :)

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  2. I would agree that Eddie Murphy has made some pretty bad movies the lately. He has his ups and downs, I recall hearing that he wasn't going to make any more movies. I think he just needs to choose more wisely which roles he takes.

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