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Candid Reviews of Movies Just Hitting The Big Screen
by Cole Smithey
The Score
The opportunity to see Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, and Edward Norton in
the same movie together should be enough of a cinematic attraction to draw
more audiences than Pearl Harbor and Planet of the Apes combined. That’s
not actually the case, as witnessed by the stronger opening weekend box
office take for the gamely inept Legally Blonde, but it should be. The
Score is an elegant old school heist thriller that prides itself on
utilizing three American icons of American acting in gratifying roles that
carry a sustained punch. Brando’s performance as Max, an over the hill
jewel fence kingpin, is chewy and touching in a way that no other actor
could achieve. There’s an infectious, if somewhat sweet, energy that
simmers in every scene. Seldom has a two-hour movie seemed so unjustly
short.
From its opening take-no-prisoners safecracking scene, The Score unfolds
with clear-eyed alertness and striking precision. Nick (De Niro) is a
methodical 25-year veteran safecracker who only steals outside of his
hometown of Montreal. At home, Nick runs a luxurious jazz club and plans
to settle down with Diane, a beautiful stewardess played by Angela
Bassett, after one obligatory ‘last score’ so he can buy the club and lead
a comfortable retirement. Max (Brando) lures Nick to break his
hometown-stealing moratorium to pilfer a 17th-century French scepter worth
$30 million that’s being kept in the Customs House. Max’s man on the
inside is Jackie Teller (Norton), an over ambitious but clever thief who
has penetrated Montreal’s Customs House by going to work as a contorted,
mentally challenged night janitor named Brian.
Nick and Jackie clash from their first meeting, when Jackie’s Brian asks
Nick for directions before breaking character to reveal his “dog and pony
show.” Nick senses the unreliability in the young thief’s arrogance and
goes so far as to send over a thug to scare Jackie out of town. But the
plan backfires when Jackie overtakes his attacker and proves he can’t be
shaken off so easily, thereby paving the way for a strained partnership
with Nick to steal the scepter. While some easily bewildered audiences
will marvel at Norton’s nimble transition into the quirky persona of
Brian, the movie wisely doesn’t exploit the character for anything more
than the plot warrants. Just as with movies like Primal Fear and The Usual
Suspects, the ruse is effective because it conveys a deeper level of
character duplicity hidden by a natural form of ingenious disguise.
Director Frank Oz’s (Bowfinger) most notable oversight in The Score is his
reliance on a Miles Davis imitative musical score that undercuts the movie
with a level of studied pretension. The music used is suspiciously
unvaried and sets up a drone of trumpet jazz rather than the harmonic and
rhythmic diversity for which the music is famous. It’s obvious that the
composer was shooting for a specific era of Miles’ playing, but the
imitation pales in comparison with the original recordings. However, when
the movie shifts into its third act action theft sequence, it reaches a
momentum of suspense and panache far outweighs the musical redundancy of
the soundtrack. As ingenuity and deception collide between Nick and Jackie
The Score makes a break for an ending that jibes exquisitely with the
characters we’ve come to know over the last two hours. It seems as if the
script was written specifically for these actors because of the way that
the movie is poised to provide a hierarchy for Brando, De Niro, and
Norton.
In a year of less than mediocre movies, it’s encouraging to have one that
so clearly sets out to fulfill its genre’s designs with nothing more than
a sturdy plot, colorful dialogue and a union of actors capable of
greatness and delivering it with inspiration and determination. When Nick
tells Max he wants his cut increased from four to six million dollars, Max
laughs and shepherds the conversation into his own direction with a flip
of his middle finger to Nick. It’s at once surprising and confirming to
see Brando fueling his performance with such a spontaneous gesture of
comradely artlessness. De Niro, Norton, and Brando layer on more enlivened
levels of nuance than any of them have in recent films. This movie settles
that score.
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