Directed by: Frank Oz
Starring: Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton, Marlon Brando, Angela Bassett
The Score is a heist movie which heeds to traditions of the genre skillfully and with suspense. The participants are Nick Wells (DeNiro), a Montreal jazz club owner who moonlights as a master thief. He has never been caught, mostly because he doesn't believe in stealing in the area where he lives, and he is a criminal with uncommonly good instincts who is ready to retire. He is soon asked by mob boss Max (Brando) to work one more score with newcomer Jack (Norton), who has been working undercover as a janitor scouting the Montreal Customs House where a priceless scepter is being stored. Jack poses as Brian, who walks and speaks like someone with special needs.
Nick doesn't trust Jack at first, but slowly learns to work with the cocky upstart. Nick examines the blueprints, gathers his equipment, and hatches the plan to break into the safe while disabling cameras and keeping the security guards from being too suspicious. Nick is breaking his own rule by committing a theft in his backyard, but the score will allow him to quit for good and spend more time with his fiancee Diana (Bassett), who has the obligatory role of the romantic partner/spouse who urges the hero to spend more time at home.
DeNiro is an intriguing protagonist; slow to trust and even slower to assume nothing can go wrong. He knows the angles and while Jack thinks he has all the answers, that's when Nick changes the questions. Observing all is the slovenly Max who needs the score himself in order to get out of a potentially deadly debt. The uneasiness between Nick and Jack provide ample fireworks and the theft itself is one of ingenuity mixed with some twists you may not see coming. The closing scene in which one character asks another, "What have you got?" makes the entire movie worth it.
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