The Score (2001)

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

With generations of actors who reached the top of their game, this already gives the film an interesting dynamic.Norton does take it for me though for best performance, mainly due to the role he is playing. It's hard to say anything about this film without giving away any details, so it will just have to go onto your 'films to see' list

I can't help but feel that this movie would be far less interesting if not for the intriguing trio of Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Marlon Brando. It doesn't even have a lot to do with their acting, which is solid from each. De Niro is a more cautious version of his cool, professional persona, Brando is enjoying himself as an easygoing late-career mobster, and Norton handles a character whose quirk involves acting as a mentally challenged individual skillfully, managing to be completely inoffensive and uncannily convincing when the plot calls for it.The conclusion of the film unfolds swiftly, especially when compared to the film's two hour length (I felt that, with respect to the small number of characters and the focused nature of the plot, this could have been reduced to 100, maybe even 90 minutes). Norton's character, impressive due to his skills despite being "inexperienced", is perhaps slighted by the screenplay at the end, but I'll leave that up to you.The main characters are fairly well written. This, combined with the faces that we see speaking these lines, make the film interesting, despite being a little long and lacklustre in the suspense department.

The Score is about a hardened thief (DeNiro) who gets cajoled into doing 'one last job' by an up-and-coming criminal (Norton). That's about that. The plot isn't anything to sing about, but we watch it anyway because of the impressive casting (not to mention Marlon Brando as a mob boss).I found much of the first half pretty dull. It's all 'scene setting' and I was getting pretty bored. However, it all picks up the pace when they finally get round to pulling off the heist. The second half of the film is much better than the first. I know many people will say that the film needed the first half in order to build up character and get to know them, but, personally, I found that you could probably start watching the film about an hour in and still get everything out of it.The second half of the film makes it all worth watching. There's plenty of hiccups along the way of the heist and it definitely isn't all plain-sailing.If you enjoy the whole film - fair enough, but if (like me) you were tempted to turn it off, my advice is: don't - it definitely gets better!

Nick Wells (Robert De Niro) is an experienced professional thief and has his eyes on retiring from the game and settling down. However, when Max (Marlon Brando), a long time acquaintance, comes to Nick with details of a score that is worth millions, Nick decides to do this one last job. The reward...a priceless French scepter which is being kept under lock & key at the Montreal Customs House. Jack Teller (Ed Norton) is Max's inside man for the job and has been working at the Customs House as a mentally challenged man who goes by the name of Brian. Working together, they have to put aside any differences they have to enable them to pull off the biggest heist they have ever done.I first saw The Score when it was released 13 years ago and it may not be the most original movie out there - a heist movie with various plot twists & turns and trust issues between the main characters - but that doesn't stop it from being a great movie.The pace is good and even though there are a fewer, shall we say, slower moments to break up the main story, they are necessary and they don't ruin the overall pace of the film. The story develops nicely as the film goes on, building up suspense and tension for the main heist scenes.De Niro and Norton are excellent together here, especially when Norton plays his two characters going from Jack to Brian and back again. De Niro plays these parts superbly also (well, he plays any part superbly really) and plays them in such a way that even when his character isn't saying anything, you can see that he's calculating things out instead of just sitting there with a blank look on his face.Overall, this movie is a must watch and if you love heist movies and movies like Ronin, Heat, and Usual Suspects then you will love The Score.