The Italian Job (1969)

Not perfect, but very good.
Film about a company of master thieves who plan the perfect heist of millions of dollars worth of gold bullion in Venice and pull it off, only to be double-crossed by one of their own, Steve (played by Edward Norton), who kills the leader of the company John Bridger (played by Donald Sutherland) and leaves the rest of the company for dead, making off with the gold bullion. But the other members of the company do not die, and, led by former second in command Charlie Croker (played by Mark Wahlberg) vow to avenge their leader's death and recover the gold bullion. When a year later they track down Steve living the good life in Los Angeles, they enlist the help of John Bridger's daughter and highly skilled safe cracker Stella (played by Charlize Theron) to help them avenge their leader's and her father's death and also recover the gold bullion. The heist is on.

Comments: I found this to be a commendable movie. There are good action sequences in the two main locales of Venice and Los Angeles in which the film is set, the heist scenes are very clever, the main characters all gel well, there is some wry humour and the iconic elements from the 60s original - such as the Minis and the gold bullion - are all in place. I have not seen the original so I cannot compare the two films but this film was very good, although I felt the ending could have had more impact. Nonetheless this is a very well made - if not perfect - film. Go and see it.

Another REMAKE.
Hollywood does another remake. Hollywood puts Marky Mark in another remake. Hollywood makes an inferior remake.

Hollywood? Why all the remakes?

Not a bad movie. It is fun to watch but it has all been done before and better. Ed Norton really disappointed me as he is usually a good actor. Marky Mark is not a good actor and neither is Mose Def or Seth Green. Donald Sutherland and Charlize Theron must have felt like gods among fools working with these schlubs. That said, I still like Jason Statham. The guy has charisma.

Great Movie, Terrible Quality from the Self-Proclaimed Supreme HD Format
I'll keep this short. The movie itself is fantastic. However, I would surmise that this Blu Ray was ported back when Sony thought that MPEG-2 was the best codec for HD video. Now that they've had to fall in line with HD DVD and use VC-1 for most of their transfers, the quality of this movie is poor at best. I've compared this version to both the DVD and the HD DVD version and both are superior to this version. The artifacts and quality in general is atrocious.

Unfortunately, this is the problem with BluRay right now. They have hundreds of great movies out there that were encoded using MPEG2 and they look terrible. They need to go back and remaster all of these movies because they are not even on par with DVD quality.