The Score

There might have been a time when the prospect of Messrs. deNiro and Brando teaming up on screen would have set pulses racing, and this was before Ed Norton proved himself one of the outstanding actors of the present day. And yet, all three have now collaborated on the same film with results that will be remembered by practically nobody. Though it’s a competent and tight thriller, by no means as bad as some of its type, The Score is also pedestrian and unambitious in the extreme, and all of its principal players have surely seen better days than this.

DeNiro’s prolific workrate has to be admired, and he still occasionally hits the mark, but it’s difficult to deny that his recent CV has tended in the direction of deterioration (Ronin, Analyse This) and his performance here is again heavily reliant on the somewhat overworked glowering-and-scowling routine. He plays an ageing burglar whose middleman (Brando) persuades him to pull off one last, enormously lucrative safe-cracking heist before retirement, while his missus (Bassett) attempts to talk him out of it. The catch: He will have to team up with Norton’s weirdo nervous-wreck/retard partner-in-crime, against his better judgment.

Progressing in sure-footed, occasionally ponderous and always uninspired fashion, The Score runs much like every other rainy-day suspense thriller of its kind: forgivable in itself, but faintly tragic in view of the talent involved. The final half-hour ups the excitement factor a couple of volts, with an extended heist sequence flawlessly filmed in the unlikely event of your not having seen something similar several times before, and Norton’s eternal capacity to take the audience by surprise again in evidence.

As unfailingly competent as The Score is, however, you might be entitled to expect a little bit more inspiration: there’s a disappointingly contrived and calculated feel to the entire exercise, and you would have an extremely hard time working up the necessary enthusiasm to watch it twice.

Acceptable, but far from thrilling.