Cinema: Heist

Gene Hackman is the thief, Danny DeVito is his financier, and for two hours they engage in an insanely complicated effort to rob a shipment of gold bullion and double-cross each other. Writer-director David Mamet has so many obligations to his plot that he has neither time nor energy to develop these or any other characters (played by the likes of Delroy Lindo and Ricky Jay) beyond the bounds of genre cliche. Or to dole out more than a few lines of his usually smart dialogue. The result is a well-tooled machine chugging coldly along a twisting road to nowhere.

--By Richard Schickel