Tower Heist
Josh Kovacs works as a manager at a luxury appartment building for the rich and wealthy. He makes sure they get provided with everything they want and need and he always does it with a smile. Especially Arthur Shaw, a financier, is one of his favorite residents.
When one day Shaw is arrested by the FBI on fraud charges, Kovacs finds out that Shaw actually was running a Ponsy-like scheme in which Kovacs also invested the money of the employees’ pension fund. Kovacs loses his temper and with that also his job. When the agent who arrested Shaw tells Kovacs they’re convinced Shaw has no less than 20 million dollars tucked away somewhere, Kovacs believes he knows where and decides to take revenge on the man and return the employees the money they owe. But for that to happen, he and a couple of other workers who got fired need some professional help in order to succeed in breaking in the tower penthouse where Shaw is being held.
Sound and Vision:
The transfer is technically quite impressive for the most part with deep blacks, shiny colors, good contrast and plenty of detail. There’s some minor aliasing present and a couple of night time shots flatten out a bit, but that’s all there is to comment negatively on regarding the transfer. One thing that’s quite annoying but not due to the transfer is the fact that some shots have focal issues where the lower part of the image is hair sharp, while the top half tends to become a bit blurry. It doesn’t happen all too often, but when it’s there it’s noticeable.
Tower Heist comes with a HD DTS track that’s quite underwhelming when it comes to the surrounds and subwoofer. Dialogue is crystal clear, and the fronts provide a good stereo range, but the rears hardly ever come into play except for creating some environmental ambiance in street level scenes.
Extras:
– Alternative endings
– Deleted and alternative scenes
– Gag Reel
– Brett Ratner’s Video Diary
– Plotting ‘Tower Heist’
– Audio commentary Track
– Pocket BLU App for Tablet
Conclusion:
Tower Heist is like a funny take on Ocean’s Eleven, which in itself already tries to be not too seriously. As such, you expect to be laughing out loud constantly, and that expectation unfortunately doesn’t get fulfilled.
The first part of the movie is rather slow and lacks some really good jokes, and it isn’t until Eddie Murphy really comes into play that jokes start coming up stronger and you actually have a couple of laughs. Not that this makes the movie amazingly funny.
Overall, the story and acting is quite alright, but there just isn’t enough punch to make it truly stand out. Stiller and Murphy aren’t a bad duo but they constantly seem to be holding back. And the same can be said about the rest of the cast. There’s some nice names in there with Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda and Casey Affleck, but none of them truly manage to shine or make a difference. Throughout the movie you’re wondering when the jokes will finally start rolling and make you laugh your socks off.
In the end you’ve watched a movie that isn’t too bad, but doesn’t stand out of the crowd either. It’s too much like McDonald’s and not enough MasterChef.
5.0