Absolutely Fantastic

Absolutely brilliant

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

An aging thief hopes to retire and live off his ill-gotten wealth when a young kid convinces him into doing one last heist. Despite a cast of talented people such as Robert De Niro (The Godfather Part II, Casino), Edward Norton (The Incredible Hulk, American History X) and Marlon Brando (The Godfather, Superman: The Movie and Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut) The Score does too little to keep it's viewers interested and even the experienced actors like De Niro and Brando were just meh in their roles on the other hand Norton's perfomance was good when he was passing as a mental health patient but other than that? The movie was boring and dull from start to finish (4.0/10)

I didn't really have high hopes going into this but its actually very well done. Great characters and the plot is simple yeah, but its executed well enough to be entertaining. You really care about whether or not the heist will succeed or fail. It's different to most movies in this category so it wasn't boring or repetitive. 8 of of 10 stars.

The Score is a surprisingly good film that will remind you of many other films, not just heist films. Two that come to mind are Midnight Run and Heat.The strength of this film is its realistic portrayal of a heist where things don't go smoothly and according to plan, just like in real life. This is what creates the bulk of the suspense and keeps you engaged through most of the film. The technical aspects of breaking into a safe, re-wiring security systems and hacking into computers appear very realistic as well.The main weakness of this movie is a problem it shares with Heat. Heat dragged in scenes between the stars and their significant others for no good reason. Like in Heat, The Score drags, especially early on, when it spends time on De Niro's relationship with his girlfriend.Those scenes don't add much to De Niro's character and could be condensed. Because of this detour, the film doesn't get to the good stuff— the heist— until almost 30 minutes later. But once it gets there, it does a good job keeping you engaged until the end. Other films you'll be reminded of are The Usual Suspects, Primal Fear and The Italian Job. One other weakness, and this is minor, is the soundtrack. The should get rid of the 80s sounding soundtrack and use a more contemporary one instead.

Nick Wells (Robert De Niro) is a safe cracker living in Montreal. He's almost caught in the last caper and now his fence Max (Marlon Brando) tells him that the buyer is dead. Instead Max has a possible $40M job at the Montreal Customs House. Nick never does a job in country and he wonders if he should retire. Nick's girlfriend Diane (Angela Bassett) is a flight attendant. Jack Teller (Edward Norton) is the inside man. He's been pretending to be a mentally challenged janitor for 3 weeks. He surprises Nick on the street and Nick's not amused.The movie has 3 great actors and they should be able to chew up the scenes. However this is not very intense. That's deadly for a thriller. I can't pinpoint the exact problem other than a lack of tension. It could be the editing, or the lackluster music. I have to blame most of it on director Frank Oz. This is not his genre. He doesn't do action thrillers unless there are puppets involved. This movie could have worked 20 years ago but this genre should have more excitement.