Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy lead an all-star cast in Tower Heist, a comedy caper about working stiffs who seek revenge on the Wall Street swindler who stiffed them. After the workers at a luxury Central Park condominium discover the penthouse billionaire has stolen their retirement, they plot the ultimate revenge: a heist to reclaim what he took from them. Queens native Josh Kovacs (Stiller) has managed one of the most luxurious and well-secured residences in New York City for more than a decade. Under his watchful eye, nothing goes undetected. In the swankiest unit atop Josh's building, Wall Street titan Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is under house arrest after being caught stealing two billion from his investors. The hardest hit among those he defrauded? The tower staffers whose pensions he was entrusted to manage. With only days before Arthur gets away with the perfect crime, Josh's crew turns to petty crook Slide (Murphy) to plan the nearly impossible...to steal what they are sure is hidden in Arthur's guarded condo. Though amateurs, these rookie thieves know the building better than anyone. Turns out they've been casing the place for years, they just didn't know it.
Producers hired a professional safe cracker, eight time world champion Jeff Sitar, to work with the props master to set up the dial lock for the safe cracking scene and coach Gabourey Sidibe on how to use a safe cracker's listening device and work the dial to crack the safe.
FAMOUS QUOTES
Josh Kovacs: The average apartment in the Tower costs 5.6 million dollars. We have the best views, the most advanced security systems, but you know what these people are really buying?
Rick Malloy: White neighbours?
REVIEWS
Smoothly made and smart enough. It's not going for too much, but I laughed a lot. Reviewed by: Wesley Morris of Boston Globe.
Tower Heist is as over-inflated as those Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons that are featured in the movie's climax. Also similarly, it's entertaining in its own predictable way. Reviewed by: Liam Lacey of The Globe and Mail (Toronto).
The caper is a dud - so stupid and implausible from beginning to end that it's impossible to take it seriously for even the briefest of moments. Reviewed by: James Berardinelli of Reel Views.
There's not much to say about a jerry-built caper comedy, except that this one has timeliness on it side, and some first-rate clowns. Reviewed by: Peter Travers of Rolling Stone.
The movie is broad and clumsy, and the dialogue cannot be described as witty, but a kind of grandeur creeps into the screenplay by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson. Reviewed by: Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times.
