Movie Review: Tower Heist
Tower Heist is a timely action comedy about the seething discontent felt by so many after the financial collapse and the revelations detailing Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme to relieve countless investors of their portfolios, retirement parachutes, and children’s piggybank contents. Tower Heist arrives just as disenfranchised U.S. citizens have taken to the streets in the “Occupy” movement, offering a breezy (though not too political) revenge fantasy for the masses that sees luxury apartment manager Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) organize a plot to steal twenty million dollars from the penthouse lair of Madoff stand-in Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda in a role not unlike his Oscar-nominated turn in The Aviator).
In the aftermath of an FBI sting, Shaw’s maleficence is made public (and there is the strong chance that he will get away with his crimes); Kovacs is touched and angered by the stories of his staff members who have lost their life savings and sets out to organize the robbery with help from an unlikely band of thieves – consisting of an elevator operator (Michael Pena), an evicted tenant (Matthew Broderick), a conflicted concierge (Casey Affleck), and a petty street thief (Eddie Murphy). The shaky first act had me concerned that Tower Heist would be broad, sentimental, and stereotypical – it is. But the film takes off once Murphy’s character Slide is introduced in a street scene that could make you double-take and think you are watching a sequel to Trading Places. Eddie Murphy – he of mediocre family fare rivaled only by Adam Sandler – actually makes this a better movie. The scenes of Slide initiating the crew into the criminal fold and the boys sheepishly plotting the heist are enlivened by Murphy’s off-the-cuff line readings and urge to hurdle the PG-13 rating.
Leading the whole caper, Stiller’s Kovacs is the straight-man weak link in the cast of characters. Stiller really only shines as a comedian when playing goofy nimrod characters in his own productions (Tropic Thunder, Zoolander) and finds little to do but react in other roles like the Fockers films or Night at the Museum movies. He moves the plot along as the mature one keeping the robbery on course and acts as the movie’s “message” mouthpiece when he confronts the criminal Shaw – shackling his greater comedic impulses.
Eddie Murphy (right) and Ben Stiller in Tower Heist.
Photo by David Lee – © 2011 Universal Studios. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Though indebted to the conceit of the George Clooney/Steven Soderbergh Ocean’s movies (down to the refreshingly subtle balance in casting soft-spoken Casey Affleck), Tower Heist doesn’t swagger with the bothersome vanity that defines that franchise, rather it has neurotic characters thrown into an absurd situation that only goes overboard when macho director Brett Ratner weighs the film down with an action sequence involving an automobile suspended high above the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with the leads in the driver’s seat. The (car) suspension of disbelief becomes impossible once that vehicle ends up on top of an elevator and ultimately in one more surprise location.
As silly as the premise, execution, and science-defying action may be, it is hard to deny that Tower Heist is an audience-pleasing romp with an appealing ensemble cast – including Gabourey Sidibe and Tea Leoni – that is in step with the national mood.
Gregory Fichter
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