Review: 'Tower Heist 'isn’t exactly a towering disappointment

Film: Tower Heist  (U/A)
Cast: Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick Tea Leoni, Gabourey Sidibe
Director: Brett Ratner
Rating: ***

 

Josh Kovacs (Stiller) is the anally retentive manager of the Tower, a five-star New York hotel whose penthouse suite occupant Arthur Shaw (Alda), a self-made investment banker who values a good pyrrhic victory, is being implicated as the mastermind of a Ponzi scam. Besides heartlessly swindling money from the masses, the seemingly benign and down-to-earth Shaw also fleeced the faithful staff of the hotel, who serviced him irreproachably for decades, by causing them to lose their investments and pension plans. When Shaw’s lack of regard is evident to Kovacs, he switches loyalties and heeds a drunken suggestion of his potential love interest FBI Agent Claire Denham (Leoni), who is also responsible for spurring him into action.

 

Kovacs assembles a posse with slackerish brother-in-law and hotel concierge Charlie, washed-out Wall Street maven turned squatter Mr Fitzhugh (Broderick), Jamaican maid Odessa (Sidibe) and common criminal Slide (Murphy) – an anti-Ocean’s 11 of sorts – with the goal to get even with Shaw by “storming the castle". Their target: a concealed vault in Shaw’s penthouse – which, besides having state-of-the-art surveillance, is guarded day and night by FBI agents.  

 

Tower Heist is a brisk, energetic and, at times thrilling revenge-based comic romp about desperate people with
everything to lose vs the 21^st century menace – corporate greed. With its ample silliness regarding how they achieve this end, the film, which calls for immense suspension of disbelief, however, isn’t one you would want to, or should, deconstruct.

 

If the viewer keeps his expectations at rock bottom (like this reviewer’s) Tower Heist is an occasionally amusing, nay, charming film with a motley bunch of characters played by actors such as Stiller and Broderick,  who, more or less are doing what they do best. It’s a shame that the consistency of good humour is variable, though.

 

Eddy Murphy’s character, though not a strictly central one, is a throwback to his pre-family movie days and yes, he still has it. The writing, though, falls short when it comes to accommodating his sizeable acting prowess and impeccable comic timing.

 

The film is an entertaining one-time watch that, with sharper writing, could have been something worth returning to. Who knows, it could have if been a cult classic. Scenes such as those where Broderick is dangling in Shaw’s Steve Mcqueen-owned prized Ferrari, hundreds of feet in the air above a blissfully oblivious Thanksgiving Day parade stick with you while for the most part, the film is unfortunately forgettable.