By Zack Rosenfeld
Editor in Chief
It’s hard to go wrong with a cast including Ben Stiller, Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick and Eddie Murphy but Brett Ratner’s “Tower Heist” finds ways to not only be childish and disinteresting but also incredibly unrealistic.
“Tower Heist” has its moments with decent cinematography, but fails to have decent acting with a great cast nor a screenplay that would allow the actors to do what they do best.
Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, manager of an expensive high rise apartment tower owned by Wall Street giant Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) in New York. When Shaw is arrested for orchestrating a Panzi Scheme, similar to that of Bernie Madoff, every all of Kovacs’s workers lose their pension due to Shaw’s financial tactics.
In order to return what was stolen from the workers, Kovacs assembles a group of people including former apartment attendee Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), neighbor and crook Slide (Eddie Murphy) and apartment worker Charlie (Casey Affleck) to steal $20 million from Shaw’s apartment.
A large part of the movie’s plot is the setting in New York in which Stiller gives an awful and at times overdone New York accent. Along with being set in New York the movie makes several allusions to Bernie Madoff when he was put under house arrest after being caught with a Ponzie Scheme. The movie does a decent job in portraying Shaw as a heartless villain to the public.
Stiller’s performance as a Robin Hood-esque hero is admirable, but mostly childish and hard to take seriously as a lead role. Even worse, Murphy’s role as Slide is not only disappointing but also under-utilized, similarly with Broderick’s performance as a wimpy dead beat father. Acting was far below expectations.
The film also has several plot gaps within its storyline including a minor romance between Kovacs and an FBI agent but the film does not lend the viewer any clue on where the relationship is heading as the film progresses. Also, there is an instance where the characters manage to take a car from the top level of the tower through an elevator shaft and then inside a pool on the roof of the tower without any explanation.
Overall, with the film had the potential to be a decent comedy film but it seemed at times that Ratner couldn’t decide whether to make the film more dramatic or comedic and the actors didn’t live up to their expectations.
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