Tower Heist Review

Tower Heist is a movie that's almost entirely predicated on logic leaps, massive assumptions and incredibly dumb luck. Characters often act on hunches or theoretical probabilities, and at its core, the film doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Despite these shortcomings, if you don't really think about those things, you can start to appreciate the characters themselves and get a kick out of some very solid performances.

Directed by Brett Ratner, Tower Heist follows Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller), the manager of a highly prestigious Columbus Circle high-rise in New York City. When he and his hardworking staff fall prey to a Ponzi scheme devised by of one of the tenants, wealthy Wall Street businessman Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a small group of the the workers branch off and conspire to rob his penthouse residence.

Now, if you've seen a trailer for Tower Heist, you probably already know all this, and it's a pretty straightforward premise to wrap your head around. The problem is that it takes about 45 minutes of the film's 104-minute runtime to actually reach the point where the characters even begin planning the heist.

This isn't entirely a bad thing, since the buildup leading up to this turnaround is actually pretty engaging. We definitely get all the backstory we need to make these guys feel likable, and there's plenty of hijinx to enjoy throughout the first act. Matthew Broderick and Michael Pena in particular dish out some great performances.

However, it's when the actual heist begins that things start falling apart. There's plenty of time spent on establishing all the setups like Stiller's familiarity with the building or Broderick's affinity for numbers. The payoffs for those setups just never really add up in the long run, and none of the characters ever seem to maximize their potential. Too many variables in the heist just kind of lead to one big, illogical mess.

But really, it's the characters that are the highlight of the film anyway. Eddie Murphy pulls out one of the best performances he's given in years as the raunchy, two-bit criminal Slide. The aforementioned Broderick kills as the sad, lonely and bankrupt Wall Street investor down on his luck. Even Tea Leoni has some good laughs as the FBI special agent assigned to the case. In fact, if you can forget how ridiculous it is to assume that Shaw is hiding a safe in his penthouse suite purely based on intuition, Tower Heist is actually a very entertaining ride.

Overall, Tower Heist is good-natured, schlocky fun and it's never boring or slow. The film asks for a bit of a mental shutdown, but if you're in the mood for it, then definitely check it out. Sure, the whole plan for robbing that penthouse solely depends on a series of really fortunate happy accidents that would never happen in real life. But at the end of the day, none of that stuff really matters because the film doesn't take itself seriously enough to demand your cerebral attention. If you like any of the actors in it, then you'll probably enjoy it.

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