Viking Night: The Italian Job
By Bruce Hall
March 22, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com

For a 1960s film, that's a lot of women in their bra and panties.
Most consumers have no problem loving a huge budget blockbuster. Movies that are meant to appeal to the widest possible audience usually do just that. But some films have a narrower vision, or simply contain more complex meaning than meets the eye. They aren't always art, and they aren't always even very successful. But for a devoted and eccentric few, they're the best entertainment money can buy. Once, beginning with Erik the Viking, a group of dedicated irregulars gathered weekly in a dingy dorm room to watch these films and discuss how what pleases the few might also appeal to the many. Time has separated the others in those discussions so that I alone remain to ponder the wider significance of cult cinema. But while the room is cleaner and I no longer have to skip class to do it, I still think of my far off friends whenever I hold Viking Night.

Let me start this off pointing out that I enjoyed the 2003 remake of this film and I am a big fan of Mark Wahlberg. The remake borrowed a few ideas, but in all other respects is different from the original. And as for Wahlberg, he’s a good actor but the guy is just not working with the same set of tools as Michael Caine. It’s nothing against the artist formerly known as Marky Mark; for a guy who started his career hanging around New Kids on the Block, he’s come a long way.

It’s just that you can’t beat Caine at what he does, which is provide the best living example of what would happen if Anthony Hopkins and Jason Statham were able to have a son together. His regal bearing and distinctive Cockney accent made him unique to American audiences early in his career. His considerable talent has brought him enduring international popularity. And his role in The Italian Job made him a pop culture celebrity, at least in Europe. The historically war torn continent recovered physically from World War II during the '50s and it was during the next decade that a renaissance of economic cooperation and cultural cross pollination gave us the Swinging '60s. It was a colorful time, and both Britain and Italy were right in the middle of it. And there’s just no reason not to put that kind of stuff on film.

Although it’s a product of the same decade as Ocean’s Eleven and The Thomas Crown Affair, The Italian job is a better movie than the first, and just a whole lot more fun than the latter. And compared to the grittier 2003 version, the original film is a shagadelic joyride set to a musical score designed to make you want to watch some footie and raise a pint for Merry Olde England. Even the memorable opening scene, which involves a fiendishly simple Mafia assassination, sets up a bright, carefree tone. And it works well, provided you know what to expect going in. American audiences didn’t, because the Italian Job was marketed as a violent gangster film in the States. To this day, the film remains largely unseen on this side of the pond.

That’s too bad, because Charlie Croker (Caine) is quite a guy. When we first meet him, he’s a daffy, dapper bandit just finishing a stint in what looks like the nicest white collar joint I’ve ever seen. I mean that had I reason to believe the prisons in the United States were this nice I might have stolen a Porsche instead of applying to college. The cells look cleaner than my dorm room was, the prisoners eat more often than I did and the uniforms are nicer than what I was wearing at the time. At any rate, think of Croker as James Bond’s slightly less talented, slightly less handsome younger cousin. He has the same champagne taste, but works without access to the Queen’s bank book.

In the network of scum and villainy that is London’s criminal underground, nice things take a lot more effort to come by. But by the time he’s made his way to his tailor and snagged himself a Bond-worthy set of wheels, Charlie is ready for life on the outside. At first he seems content to live out his days as a professional party guest. But it turns out that the death we saw at the beginning of the film was of Croker’s closest friend and mentor. Charlie is whisked to a meeting with the man’s widow, who fills in her ersatz brother-in-law on the reason her husband is dead.

It turns out Charlie spent his career looking up to the right man. His old partner leaves behind plans for a heist so daring, it promises to make a living legend out of whoever can pull it off. Croker can’t resist the challenge, which is good, because otherwise there’d be no movie. The plan involves hacking the computer traffic grid that runs in Turin, Italy. Using the snarled traffic as cover, the gang would rob a Mafia gold shipment in broad daylight. They would escape using modified cars driven by professionals on a pre-planned route. Before La Cosa Nostra knows what happened, the crew escapes the country and spends the summer on a beach somewhere, drinking pina coladas.

A heist like that requires a large crew, and putting together that kind of talent tends to draw attention. The mob gets wind of the plan and does its best to keep it from happening. Since this is a heist film, you should know how it goes from there. The robbery is a given, and it always goes off without a hitch, except for the one wacky thing nobody thought of. This much we know, but where these kinds of movies differ from one another is in tone and execution.

And that’s where The Italian Job makes itself memorable. What makes the heist movie genre in general much fun is that while you’re generally expected to follow the usual script, there’s still wide latitude for interpretation. You can make drama out of it, like Heat, or you can make it campy fun, like The Pink Panther. You can make it pretty much anything in between; most audiences will still identify with the material. The Italian Job succeeds at this, sitting right square in the middle of these two extremes. The stakes never quite feel as high as they usually do when Robert De Niro is involved, but the film still feels more innovative than trivial. Computer hacking and car chases as performance art were edgy concepts 40 years ago, and European audiences no doubt found this romantic and exciting. It also has the unintended effect of making the film seem a lot more contemporary than it is. While you’re watching, if it weren’t for the bell-bottom pants, wide lapels and sideburns, this movie might have been made a decade ago instead of the year men first walked on the moon.

As forward thinking as it may be, The Italian Job is very much a product of its time. There was no place more Mod than London in 1968. Mike Myers can make fun of it if he wants to; this movie makes it look damn cool. The eclectic clothes, the the way the characters speak and carry themselves, and all those sexy European sports cars – it’s the way Austin Powers would live if he really existed. But what really makes it all come alive is the music.

I can’t figure out how anybody can talk about The Italian Job without mentioning Quincy Jones’s terrific soundtrack. Jones, who just might be the single most talented human alive, wrote a number of singles that feature prominently in the film. They add energy to it, and where in some scenes, the movie makes the music work, in others, the music makes the movie work. Either way, it works for me. It turned Michael Caine into an instant icon of cool, and I’m pretty sure it served as inspiration for at least three out of five heist movies made since 1970. Not everyone loves The Italian Job but the people who do tend to love it a lot.

Over the years, the passion so many people feel for this film has stoked controversy around the film’s ending. I’ve never really understood that because to me, it is the perfect one for such a freewheeling story. It’s a literal cliffhanger and it leaves entirely up to the viewer whether the thieves get away with their thieving or not. And as the credits roll over that ending it’s almost as much fun to sit there thinking it over as it was to watch. Long gone are the days of lime green polyester ties, three inch wide mutton chops and leaded gasoline. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun to go back in time and get your Austin Powers on for 100 minutes or so.and Come on, how can you not like a movie that’s got Michael Caine, Benny Hill, and a car chase so hilariously fun it has its own theme song?