Tower Heist

Once again, we have a film that explains itself with its title. It is called Tower Heist, which is the most fun I've had at seeing the news on screen.

Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is the manager of a major Apartment Building where the corporate big wigs live. He has a nice relationship with one of his tenants, Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), with whom he invested the staff's pension fund. That relationship turns justifiably sour when Shaw is busted for a Ponzi Scheme; amongst the lost funds are the pension fund.

Now under house arrest, Shaw won't tell Josh where the stolen funds are, so Josh decides to take them back. For the mission, Josh assembles some of the staff, a luckless ex-tenant named Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) and even his street smart neighbor Slide (Eddie Murphy). They plan to strike during the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, but they have to work fast or else.

The swindler gets swindled. The one percent will wish they were with everyone else. Corporate thieves will meet the petty crooks. With director Brett Ratner's mix of action and comedy, these possibilities are fun to see on screen.

On the comedy side, Ben Stiller and his co-stars pull it off really well. It's so fun to see them play off each other, especially when it involves Murphy and Broderick's characters. Amongst the cast, Téa Leoni (as a sympathetic FBI Agent) and Gabourey Sidibe (as the maid turned safecracker) stand out perfectly. With this ensemble, the 99 percent has nothing to fear.

On the action side, there's plenty of that thanks to editor Mark Helfrich. His work here has given the action scenes a rapid pace that's perfectly exciting. Rather than swamp the actors, these scenes have allowed them more time to work together. Ultimately, what the editing's accomplished is that it's given the action scenes a tense unpredictability I've usually seen in action dramas.

In the end, Tower Heist is a great revenge fantasy for the swindled majority. If there was any holes in the plot, it surely drove through them because it was so fun. And that's what we need now. Oh yeah, and cheaper ticket prices.