THE SCORE
Blithe caper with three aces.
Running time: 124 minutes. Rated R (profanity). At the E-Walk, the Lincoln Square, the Kips Bay, others.
‘THE Score” is a once-in-a-lifetime summit of three generations of method-acting legends – Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Marlon Brando – in one crackerjack caper film.
All three get plenty of room to strut their stuff in a perfect summer diversion for all of us weary of the season’s onslaught of edited-to-death, high-tech mindlessness.
It’s the old one about the cool safecracking ace (De Niro) who reluctantly joins with a young hotshot (Norton) for one last job.
Old-timer Nick and newcomer Jack have been brought together by Nick’s longtime fence Max, who desperately needs them to lift a jeweled French scepter worth $30 million from under ultra-tight security at Montreal’s Customs House.
Nick, a globetrotting American, resists doing a job in his adopted home of Montreal. Used to being a solo act, he’s not sure whether he trusts Jack, a computer whiz who’s gotten a job on the inside by posing as a retarded janitor.
But Nick is ultimately pulled in by his friendship with Max and a desire to pay off the mortgage on his jazz club and settle down with his longtime flight attendant girlfriend Diane (Angela Bassett), who won’t commit until he gives up his criminal pursuits.
The meticulous planning of the heist and the score itself cover familiar territory – as do the usual complications and double-crosses.
But director Frank Oz (a specialist in comedies like “In & Out”) keeps the suspense taut and doesn’t have to resort to gratuitous violence (the film gets its R rating for language) to get our adrenaline going. He’s helped by a smart script with sharp dialogue by Kario Salem and Scott Marshall Smith, rewritten by Lem Dobbs (“The Limey”).
But mostly, Oz stays out the way and lets these fantastic actors strut their stuff – individually and in twos and threes – without chopping up their scenes with the kind of attention-deficit editing that louses up so many movies these days.
Except when Norton is playing retarded, he and De Niro basically compete to see who can under-act the other. It’s positively mesmerizing.
The most flamboyant moments belong, of course, to the massive Brando who wears caftans and ascots – and looks and sounds as if Truman Capote had swallowed Sydney Greenstreet whole.
Brando’s a hugely self-depracating hoot. His first line to De Niro is “look at you, you look like s – – -.”
It’s not easy to steal a scene in a movie like this, but Jamie Harrold comes close in a tiny role as a mother-dominated computer hacker enlisted by Nick.
Brando and De Niro both live amid haute-Paramount interiors, gorgeously photographed by Rob Hahn.
Some will carp, with justification, that Oz didn’t need to let “The Score” run slightly over two hours.
But it can’t have been easy to cut the work of these three, plus some terrific jazz numbers by Cassandra Wilson and Mose Allison.
THEIR FIRST TIME TOGETHER
‘THE Score” is the first time acting heavyweights Robert De Niro and Marlon Brando have worked together – though they are the only two individuals to win Oscars for playing the same character.
Brando, 77, won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Vito Corleone in “The Godfather” (1972) but refused to accept the award to protest the plight of American Indians.
Two years later, De Niro got the same honor for playing Vito as a young immigrant in “The Godfather, Part II.”
Each has numerous Oscar nominations and one Best Actor Award apiece: Brando for “On the Waterfront” (1954) and De Niro for “Raging Bull” (1980).
De Niro has appeared in six movies during the past year – equal to Brando’s total output over the last decade.– Lou Lumenick