“What’s up with this movie?” These may be the first words to come out of your mouth after watching Tower Heist, director Brett Ratner’s asinine way of portraying an unlikely band of “thieves” you wouldn’t believe in a mission to rob a Wall Street tycoon to set things right – but unlikely may just be the word if humor is incorporated in a heist theme. Written by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson, Tower Heist is the epitome of “I guess it is okay” entertainment.
Ben Stiller (Starsky and Hutch, Meet the Parents) plays the lead guy as Josh Kovacs, the out-and-out services manager of a luxurious and high-class New York apartment holding the most expensive real estate in North America named as The Tower (patterned after the Trump Tower). When the FBI arrested the amiable Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a Wall Street businessman who lives at the penthouse of the building, for committing securities fraud and malversing large amounts of money including the pension funds of the Tower’s employees, things went from “good morning” to “where is my money Josh?”
While Detective Claire Denham (Tea Leoni) figures out where the money is hidden, Josh suspects that Shaw stashed a great deal of it inside one of the walls of his penthouse apartment. In order to retrieve the money, Josh plans a heist by assembling a group out of the employees of the Tower including the concierge Charlie Gibbs (Casey Affleck), elevator man Enrique Dev’Reaux (Michael Peña), a broke accountant Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) and Jamaican maid Odessa Montero (Gabourey Sidibe) with the Tower’s doorman Lester (Stephen Henderson), and Slide (Eddie Murphy), a loudmouth thief to do the job.
About 30 to 40 minutes into the movie, you get nothing but blue-collar clichés. Let’s have it upfront, the movie offers nothing new or big other than a story which is not that bad for action-comedy, and a fresh re-introduction of Eddie Murphy who apparently stole the show (no pun intended). It’s like that Ocean’s Eleven movie you are watching, except with a very simple robbery plan and a bunch of incompetent wannabe thieves. The portrayal of the story itself is not that great. There were hints to subplots that were abandoned i.e. the seemingly growing romantic interest of Josh on Claire, and the fact that Josh and Arthur, including Slide, grew up in one neighborhood.
Keeping a keen eye on the events that came about in Tower Heist, there were things that don’t really happen in real life. For one is that a car made out of gold is not that easy to pull or to dangle at the top of a very tall tower. Another is that a court hearing cannot be rescheduled on the command of a character like that of Josh Kovacs, although Brett Ratner did not show us exactly how the court date was moved. Want another one? How about the FBI believing that the court is open on Thanksgiving? They’re the FBI for goodness’ sakes. Or the fact that an FBI agent can be bribed that easily by a fresh lawyer? It sure as hell isn’t that easy. If you plan on jumping in front of a speeding subway train, but before you can even jump a cop pulls you off the rail, will you really end up in the hospital as if you got hurt or injured like what happened to Lester in this movie?
I wish Brett Ratner wasn’t that selfish in giving details to the heist process. The ending seemed rushed. A heist movie with the five W’s is trash if the “how” is missing. The audience is left guessing as to how the car ended up in the swimming pool, or, again, how the court date was moved, or how the car was dismembered into pieces and taken out of the building without anyone noticing. And what the heck happened to Simon?!
There were many holes, yes, but that doesn’t mean Tower Heist is a terrible waste of 85 million dollars. The humor worked. Eddie Murphy was finally set free from his trend of characters that didn’t really suit him, like that in Dr. Dolittle, or in Meet Dave. His ragtag, villainous, and blabber master character in this movie is hilarious and is way better than any role he played for the last ten years. Although Eddie Murphy’s character Slide was not meant to be the main focus of the film, being a non-essential role as it is, it is still great to see a flash of the old time comedy Murphy used to bring to the table.
Ben Stiller is still the Ben Stiller we know, and it goes without saying, he never slacks off in any character he plays – he deserves the lead role. A fresh light was shone upon Michael Peña as the dimwit member of the gang (that “ski caps instead of ski masks” crack was outrageous!), but the rest of the cast wasn’t that great in the supporting charter, except maybe for Matthew Broderick whose minimal peck on his Fitzhugh character paid off .
With a sloppy storyline that borders absurdity and a poor presentation for details, a lot of things went wide off the mark for Tower Heist, but with ridiculous humor that can make anyone laugh, a lot of things also went right – Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy really saved the day. Give it your opinion, but Tower Heist is exactly in the middle of five stars.