Edward Norton is one of the best actors working today, and Robert DeNiro and Marlon Brando are among the best film actors in history, so it is to be expected that a good film would result from a combined effort from all three of them. DeNiro plays Nick, a veteran break-in artist who is forced to do one last score before his plan to fade into blissfully obscure retirement with his clichéd girlfriend, and who doesn't like the entire set-up from the beginning. Norton plays the characters of Jack (the man who investigated and set-up the heist from the beginning) and Brian (the man who works as a janitor at the building where the priceless scepter is kept, and who pretends to be mentally challenged to avoid drawing attention to himself). You can't help comparing these performances to his similar roles as Aaron and Roy in Primal Fear, which was Norton's second best performance ever, second only to his role as Derek Vineyard in American History X and followed closely by his Jack in Fight Club.
Marlon Brando is back to remind the world of what a gigantic, gigantic man he has become. He plays the role of Max, the aging crime lord who has become wealthy and powerful enough so that he can preside over break-ins and take a cut of the final profit without doing any of the actual breaking and entering. The film follows the set-up and the execution of the heist, in which the three men plot to steal a French national treasure, and the plot becomes necessarily thicker as the movie goes on. It is a sign of skillful filmmaking when a two-hour film spends the vast majority of its screen time setting up a heist that we don't see until very late into the film, and it still manages to move along briskly and keep the audience's attention.
(spoilers) The heist itself is particularly well done, with several new difficulties coming up even as the heist is in progress (they've already had to deal with the sudden addition of motion detectors and cameras in the basement, after it was finally discovered how valuable that thing is that they found in the leg of the termite-infested piano), including new revelations about the characters themselves. There is a scene where Jack leaves Nick hanging upside down from the ceiling in the basement, and there is really no apparent reason for him to have done this other than to let us know that Nick seems to have some questionable intentions.
The heist itself is obviously the most exciting portion of the film, and the tension escalates more and more with every passing minute. First we are on the edge of our seat because Jack is downstairs, turning cameras on and off for Nick, while we know that his janitor friend Danny is waiting for him upstairs, growing increasingly suspicious. Then Danny comes looking for him, and Jack locks him in a basement room, leaving the rest of the night crew to grow suspicious about both of them. The point of no return was passed a long time ago, and it seems at several points that something is going to go horribly wrong and force them to abort the entire thing, but we know that it's too late for them to be able to do that. The film's finale is truly respectable in that it avoids the traditional high action and manipulative shootouts, and we get a great twist involving Jack and Nick.
Nick assumingly goes off into the sunset with his girlfriend, who is played by the under-used Angela Bassett, and everyone lives happily ever after except for Jack, now the subject of a massive manhunt, and Max, who presumably gets nothing from the whole deal. We know that this is a focused action film, even if only from the fact that no one in the film has a last name, but it manages to have an interesting and involved plot with several colorful characters, and an ending that is not exactly original but is made to work very well. Good action, good performances, good direction, and an excellent script make this an action film to remember.
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