First of all, I hope you enjoy the picture of the otter showing us her baby. I thought a picture of a tall building would be a bit dull. Anyway, I was looking forward to seeing “Tower Heist,” however, I did not expect to be bowled over by it’s genius or complex storytelling. I was correct in my assumption. “Tower Heist” is a good, pleasant film. What propels the film is the performances of four actors: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, and Alan Alda. All four deliver very good performances. Without these fine actors’ performances, “Tower Heist” could have been very mediocre. The story is nothing new. Disgruntled employees plan a way to get back at their unscrupulous boss. In this case, the unscrupulousness of the boss, Arthur Shaw (Alda), is more than calling his employees names or making them work long hours. Shaw has embezzled his employees’ money in something similar to a Ponzi scheme. Josh Kovacs (Stiller), Shaw’s trusted assistant and manager of Shaw’s apartment building in New York City, cannot believe, at first that Shaw would have done such things. Upon learning that, indeed, Shaw is a malicious son of a bitch, Kovacs assembles a team of former Shaw employees to infiltrate the inner-workings of Shaw’s building so as to steal back their money. Along the way, Kovacs enlists the help of Slide (Murphy). Slide is a petty criminal who is bailed out of jail by Kovacs. Slide is to be the experienced theft expert of the team, however, his expertise is discovered to be limited to small-time thefts and not massive heists. That’s ok, though, because Kovacs’ team is good enough as it is to, through various machinations of scriptwriting, perform a massive undertaking which, as you will see if you watch this film, is quite ridiculous, however, since a majority of the performers in the film do a great job, I found myself not minding the fact that what the team ends up doing is quite impossible, at least in the non-movie world.
Eddie Murphy stands out as Slide. His dialogue is the vulgar and funny variety we remember from his roles in "48 Hours" and "Beverly Hills Cop." Thankfully for us all, he does not wear a fat suit or dress as a woman in this film. He says lots of dirty words and is crass. This is great news! Murphy is given a chance to be funny in “Tower Heist” and he succeeds. It was wonderful to see Ben Stiller in a role in which he is not humiliated 30 times during the course of the film. Stiller is an outstanding comedic actor as can be witnessed in “Flirting With Disaster” and “Greenberg.” Though he is not given any over the top dialogue as is Murphy, Stiller does deliver his understated, funny lines with the ease and grace one would expect from a standout Stiller performance. Alan Alda is fantastic as the bastard, Arthur Shaw. It is always great to see Alan Alda in a film and such is the case in “Tower Heist.” Alda is fully capable of playing mean and slimy—and it is even more effective to use Alda in such a role because most know his characters to be easygoing. Of course, if you remember his role of Hawkeye on MASH, it is clear that his ability to deliver sarcasm and his ability to perform on a dramatic level are on display. In “Whispers in the Dark,” Alda surprises us with quite a scene of insane bravura that I will always remember. That film is not very good, however, as he does in most films in which he appears, Alda stood out.
Matthew Broderick, always a reliable performer, delvers a very good performance as a down on his luck stockbroker who is threatened with eviction from his luxury apartment in the Shaw building. His role in the heist is as the one who can fully point out just how much money Shaw has stolen. Broderick, as he did in “Election,” delivers his lines with fantastic comic nervousness. Gabourey Sidibe, who gained notoriety from her performance in “Precious” is the only source of complaint I have about “Tower Heist.” She did not seem to fit in with the rest of the heist team. Her appearance in the film seemed more like stunt casting. I never bought her performance as a Jamaican safecracker,mon.
I feel compelled to point out that I was very happy to find that there were few car crashes, explosions, shootouts, or other assorted and unnecessary action movie cliches in "Tower Heist." There is a brief car chase scene, but, as I stated, it thankfully does not take long to resolve.
I will not reveal how the plan the team of heisters has in store for the evil Arthur Shaw develops, however, as I alluded to, it is quite ridiculous. Regardless of the ridiculousness of the plan, the cast of “Tower Heist” is engaging enough to allow me to not be distracted by said plan. “Tower Heist” does not reach the top story of flim genius, however it does climb a few floors above the midway point of the filmmaking edifice.
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