The Score

The Score (2001) is set in Montreal. An ageing safecracker has decided to retire; he runs a jazz club, and one last job comes in. A sceptre is to be taken out of the customs house. The man who brings him the job attaches a younger partner, and the real tension is not in the theft but in the mistrust between those two. The cast is the event. Robert De Niro plays the thief, Edward Norton the younger partner, and Marlon Brando the man arranging it. Three generations of screen acting sitting in the same scene is the film's reason to exist. It was Brando's last film. The friction on set has been much described; he did not get on with director Frank Oz, and on some of his scenes the directing effectively fell to De Niro. Frank Oz directed. He came out of the Muppets and usually made comedies, and a heist film like this was unfamiliar ground for him. It runs 124 minutes. Good for: classical heist structure, three generations of acting together, and Montreal. Less good for: the technical section of the robbery is long and the pace drops. The one woman is barely written. The resolution is too neat and the mistrust the film built never quite pays off.