The Italian Job

F. Gary Gray’s 2003 film opens with a gold robbery in Venice, then a betrayal resets everything and the crew builds a second plan in Los Angeles. What you watch is the revenge, not the heist from the trailer. It remakes the 1969 British film, but shares less with it than people assume. In Peter Collinson’s version the theft happens in Turin, a doctored tape reel fed to the city traffic computer causes the gridlock, and it ends with the getaway coach rocking on a cliff edge. Gray hacks a traffic system, starts from gold already stolen, and closes every account. Driving the Minis into the metro was engineering, not whimsy: Los Angeles bans combustion engines in its subway tunnels, so transportation coordinator John Carpenter converted three Cooper S cars to electric. Thirty two were built for the film. Charlize Theron worked with a real safecracker for the part, and later said she was scheduled for six weeks more driver training than the men, calling it insulting. Edward Norton took his role to settle an old Paramount contract. A good fit if you know the Mini chase is the show and will sit through the long build up to it. Not for viewers hoping the Venice crew chemistry lasts; after that robbery the film turns into a revenge account.