At the center of this smoothly-produced crime thriller is a world-weary safecracker and jewel thief (Robert DeNiro), who’s on the verge of marrying his tough-but-sweet ladyfriend (Angela Bassett) and retiring to a peaceful life running his Montreal jazz club, where the likes of Cassandra Wilson and Mose Allison hold forth. But he’s enticed by professional pride and the prospect of a multi-million-dollar haul into participating in one final mega-caper.
If that premise sounds like a new variation on an old theme, it should; and what ensues, relying heavily on the mechanics of sophisticated, high-tech thievery, doesn’t do much to freshen the formula. Marlon Brando plays DeNiro’s fence and longtime partner, a mountainous, half-soused mastermind who desperately needs the big score to clear up festering debts, and Edward Norton is the young Turk, a nervy, razor’s-edge, quick-thinking con artist who poses as slightly retarded to snag a job as a janitor in the Montreal Customs House, deep within the bowels of which is secreted the object of the conspirators’ desire, a priceless, jewel-encrusted 17th-century French MacGuffin–uh, royal scepter.