With a proven action director at the helm, two screenwriters also with solid resumes and a superb cast, "Tower Heist" adds up to a great couple of hours of entertainment.
Brett Ratner, who directed the "Rush Hour" movies and "X-Men: Last Stand," works from a script by Ted Griffin ("Ocean's Eleven") and Jeff Nathanson ("Rush Hour 2" and "Rush Hour 3") to present the story of ordinary people pressed into extraordinary actions to right a terrible wrong.
Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy lead a cast list the includes pros like Alan Alda, Judd Hirsch and Matthew Broderick, along with young talent like Casey Affleck, Gaboury Sidibe and Michael Pe a. Much like "Horrible Bosses" released earlier this year, these decent, hard-working people, in their desperation, turn to crime.
Stiller's Josh Kovacs is the manager of a ritzy apartment complex called The Tower. Among its elite tenants is the mega-wealthy Wall Streeter Arthur Shaw (Alda), who owns the top floor.
Shaw is arrested on charges of massive fraud, and this makes Kovacs nervous because he turned over the management of The Tower employees' pension fund to Shaw. Eventually Kovacs has to admit the pension money may be gone, never to be recovered. He gets cozy with the FBI agent leading the investigation, Special Agent Claire Denham (T a Leoni), and when she tells Josh that charges are going to be dropped against Shaw, he vows to do what he can to get back the money he entrusted to the wealthy man.
Convinced Shaw has the money stashed somewhere in the apartment, Josh plans to break in and find the cash.
Kovacs recruits an unlikely group of thieves-to-be, drafting building's concierge, Charlie (Affleck); an elevator operator Enrique (Pe a); a maid, Odessa (Sidibe); a down and out stock trader, Fitzhugh (Broderick); and the doorman, Lester (Stephen Henderson).
Since this band of workers has zero experience in safe-cracking, Kovacs brings in a childhood acquaintance, Slide (Murphy), whose only real qualification is that he's been arrested a few times.
This is a bumbling group for the most part, although Kovacs turns out to be resourceful in improvising when plans go awry; and Odessa proves adept and cracking safes.
There are comedic misadventures along the way, and the usual verbal sparring and general goofiness of the characters that provide laughs.
Josh is a rock of optimism despite dealing with people way out of their element. Slide is vintage Murphy - a lot of cockiness and questionable motives. Charlie and Fitzhugh are the obligatory wimps while Pe a is likeably silly as a person who goofs up a lot but just may come through in a pinch. Sidibe, so wonderful in "Precious," is steady and imposing as Odessa. And Alda just oozes the arrogance of a man who makes too much money but insists he's entitled to more and perceives himself as being superior to the workers.
Leoni has some nice moments as the dedicated law enforcement official having to play by the rules even when those rules fail, and naturally finds herself frustratingly two steps behind what should be an error-prone group of novice thieves.
There are some nice twists in the movie, plenty of laughs and an ending that does not have everybody walking away in a happy situation - although overall the result they accept is satisfying.
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