Page 26 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • November 16, 2011 Novice thieves seek revenge in ‘Tower Heist’ by Dennis Seuling “Tower Heist” is very much a movie of its time. Essentially a comedy, it draws upon recent headline events and a certain big-time scam artist who profited at the expense of average, hard-working men and women. It is easy to side with a group of novice thieves when they band together in an elaborate attempt to get their lost money back. Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is manager of The Tower, a luxury Manhattan apartment building whose staff prides itself on impeccable, 24-hour service to the residents. One of these is Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a Wall Street financier recently indicted on charges of fraud. He has made bail and is now essentially under house arrest at The Tower. At one time, Josh drew upon the sterling relationship he had with Shaw to convince him to invest the retirement accounts of his colleagues. These now may have vanished. Josh is torn between his job mandate of serving the building’s clients and getting back the hard-earned cash of his co-workers and friends. FBI agent Claire Denham (Tea Leoni) tells Josh that although the agency has searched Shaw’s apartment thoroughly, a large sum of money is still missing. Josh has also been informed that guys like Shaw generally keep their wealth close by, and he knows from a blueprint of the apartment that Shaw could have had a disguised safe installed there. Josh feels obligated to crack that presumed safe and get back as much as he can of his subordinates’ missing funds. Knowing nothing about planning break-ins, Josh approaches Slide (Eddie Murphy), a shady guy from his neighborhood, to coach his team in the fine art of theft. Josh’s team consists of an unreliable concierge (Casey Affleck), Jamaican maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe), an elevator operator (Michael Pena), and a depressed, former financier who has been evicted from the building (Matthew Broderick). Most of the jokes are rooted in the ineptness of this team and their conviction that they can pull off the robbery even though they don’t even know for sure that Shaw has any cash stashed in his apartment or, for that matter, whether there is a safe. Director Brett Ratner has assembled an impressive cast, and the ensemble work and repartee among the principals is often very funny. Murphy, in particular, gets the lion’s share of laughs as Slide, a role well suited to his talent. Recent Murphy films have been box-office duds, Josh (Ben Stiller) and Slide (Eddie Murphy) plan to rob a bigtime financier in ‘Tower Heist.’ so it is encouraging to see the comedian in top comic form once again. Stiller is an actor who tends to wear out his welcome well before the end of most of his films, but here he comes off well not dominating the picture. He is the voice of reason among fools, and appears the most grounded in understanding the consequences of his actions. Broderick does a variation of his schlumpy nerd and contributes some good moments in a limited role. Sidibe is also allowed to shine as a small, but significant ingredient in the heist scheme. Alda manages to project a likable quality -- the same he relied on for years on TV as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H -- as well as an arrogant, patrician indifference to the (continued on Crossword page)