Here it is...a movie that isn't either 4 or 5 stars. "The Italian Job" is only a 3 star movie, though it could have been 4 stars if not for Mark Wahlberg. The man can't act...not even a little.
"The Italian Job" stars Mark Wahlberg as a master thief. After a job goes bad, his crew recruits master safe cracker Charlize Theron to help them settle the score. What follows is a series of maneuvers and twists that attempts to rival "Ocean's Eleven" but ultimately fails.
As I said, Wahlberg is terrible. I don't know how the man keeps getting acting jobs. I guess he might be good in straight action roles where no emotional range is required, but this was not that type of roll. Edward Norton portrays the villain, and while I usually like Norton, the script didn't really give him a chance to shine. The rest of the cast is similar...the script really didn't help them stand out.
So, why did I still give this 3 stars? Well, there was enough going on that it held my interest for 2 hours, and I did like the small twist at the end, though I sort of saw it coming. I guess I also had fairly low expectations, knowing it was a Mark Wahlberg movie, so that sort of helped too. Low expectations are an almost certain guarantee of a good movie watching experience.
1 comment:
Low expectations is probably what led to my 3-star rating as well. Check out The Happening if you want an even better example of what "happens" (bad pun there) when Wahlberg has virtually an entire movie to himself.
Oh, and you certainly need to check out the SNL skit impersonating him. Great stuff.
http://www.dailystab.com/mark-wahlberg-andy-samberg-snl-skit
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