It takes a fair amount of boldness to call your heist movie … Heist. But David Mamet, in that 20-year span of sustained greatness between the 1980s and the early aughts, was not someone who shrank away from anything. Remember when movies were made for adults? Mamet was that guy!
One foot in theater, one foot in film, and heralded often for both. Consider how the New York Times wrote about this man: in 1978, praising his “restless intellect”; in 1985, his “gritty eloquence.” The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Untouchables, Glengarry Glen Ross, Wag the Dog, Ronin. Just groups of guys doing groups-of-guy stuff: tracking down criminals, competing against each other in real estate, engaging in imperialism as a political cover-up, trying to figure out what’s so special about a goddamn briefcase. Are the accusations against Mamet of misogynistic writing unfounded? They are not. The man cannot write a woman with any depth past abstraction (which provides some kind of grim irony to his daughter Zosia starring in so many series that do a better job at that very task: Mad Men, Girls, The Flight Attendant). But when it comes to “intricate plotting and comic audacity,” as James McManus described Mamet’s first novel The Village in a 1994 New York Times book review? Ronin had that, and the similarly minded Heist does, too.
Time has a way of mellowing you. In that 1978 profile, Mamet said of his creative goals, “The last thing Mr. Mamet wants to be held responsible for is being diverting.” But aside from an ugly undercurrent of lines mocking Chinese people, “diverting” is exactly what Heist is: a perfectly serviceable, easily entertaining two hours of backstabbing, betrayals, and double crosses. The writing is both pointed and goofy in that way Mamet has so perfected, with actors called upon to say somewhat silly things with utmost sincerity. “Young, dumb, and full of cum!” during an argument. “You want to play O.K. Corral? You want to dress up and play?” during a fistfight. “Kiss my Yankee ass!” during an argument that then becomes a fistfight.
What does Gene Hackman being a Yankee have to do with anything? Do people even still use that term anymore? None of it makes any sense! And yet Heist has enough finesse from its ensemble and enough style from its set pieces that these moments are a welcome bit of jarring absurdity. With an array of strange metaphors and similes, unexpected non sequiturs, and double-take-causing one liners, Heist builds a world of men who do some things better than nearly anyone else. They lie. They steal. And they lie some more to get away with their stealing, which is really the only way to do it. “Anybody can get the goods. The hard part’s getting away,” Hackman’s Joe Moore says when explaining his line of work. And if you don’t get away at all? Well, that’s a risk in this line of work, too.
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“Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money.”
The heist movie is a foundational American subgenre, and it appeals to the capitalist-trained part of our identity that hammers home efficiency and productivity—and also to the other capitalist-trained part of our identity that is aware of the brutal realities of this economic system, and the desperation and disparity that result from it. Dead Presidents and Dog Day Afternoon. Heat and Hell or High Water. The Taking of Pelham 123 and Triple Frontier. Heist doesn’t make entirely clear the circumstances that have led these men (and one woman) to this line of work. But what Mamet’s script emphasizes is that they’re almost out of options, and what the ensemble’s stellar acting work communicates is that once this option is off the table, the table itself will cease to exist. These are characters who talk over and over and over about having backup plan after backup plan after backup plan. But infinity isn’t a reality, it’s a theory. And theories don’t pay the bills.
Hackman stars as Joe, the leader of a meticulous crew. His younger wife Fran (Mamet’s wife Rebecca Pidgeon) can talk her way out of anything and can disappear into any role. Pinky (Ricky Jay) is a great diversion, the kind of guy who will do anything—walk into traffic, luxuriate in a conversation with an opponent—to make sure Joe gets away. And second-in-command Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo), fresh out of prison and refusing to ever go back, takes no bullshit from anyone. He’ll stand up to Joe, and he’ll stand up to their fence Mickey Bergman (Danny DeVito) if the job doesn’t feel right.
For years, Joe’s crew has moved around, hitting jewelry stores with an array of specialized plans. Heist opens with one: Fran poses as a waitress and slips a sedative into the coffees ordered by a jewelry store employee; Pinky plants a bomb in a trashcan, causing an explosion that rushes everyone away from the store; Bobby changes his hat and his glasses before breaking open the door. But humans can be unpredictable, and one of the jewelry store employees doesn’t drink the tainted coffee—and so Joe shows his face on camera before tasing her. The little flex of Hackman’s jaw and the anger burning in his eyes when he sees the blinking red camera light is the kind of nuance that comes from decades of experience. And once Joe realizes that he’s burned, their next job with Mickey becomes very complicated—and possibly even compromised.
As in Ronin, Heist avoids divulging too many details about the job before progressing us deep in it. But each scene moves us forward into understanding the contrasting forces at play, and the various motivations and ambitions of these characters. DeVito’s Mickey is irritated and angry: He’s sunk money into the next “Swiss job” that Joe had initially agreed to do, and he doesn’t want to lose his investment. Fran is concerned: Should they cut and run? Pinky and Bobby are loyal, but slightly wary: Is Joe losing his focus, and if so, what happens to them? And finally, there’s also Mickey’s wildcard nephew Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell, without a dance scene but with his trademark loveable smarm). Unlike the crew, who use violence as a last resort, flashing his gun is always Jimmy’s first choice, and a close second is making eyes at Fran. “You just need somebody to lean on,” Jimmy smirks to Fran, but is dependability really what this man—mustachioed, reckless—is offering?
So these men perform their little scenes, play-acting against each other and responding to each other’s challenges and insults in theatrical moments that feed into a web of deception. This is Mamet, after all. So there’s an elaborate back and forth between Joe and Mickey about the former’s crew getting what they’re owed, each lobbing bombastic threats at the other in a fur emporium’s backroom, in a city alley, on a park bench. There’s the dance Jimmy and Bobby do, with the former daring to call the latter “the help” and then receiving a sucker punch for his disrespect. In a career full of perfect moments, Lindo’s disgusted delivery of “You know why the chicken crossed the road? Because the road crossed the chicken!” ranks fairly high. And at the end of it all, there’s Hackman’s Joe, looking back on his career of persistent deviousness and hard-earned gains and wondering, “What more can you ask of anyone?” Not much, and there’s not much more one can ask of the consistently entertaining Heist, either.
Heist is streaming on Prime Video and Tubi.
