Tower Heist Review

When was the last time Eddie Murphy made you laugh? How long has it been since Matthew Broderick was is a movie of considerable quality? And who would have thought that - given comedic powerhouse Ben Stiller’s starring presence - these two arguably burnt-out talents would be the highlights of the year’s best action-comedy, a genre that rarely gets put to use and, rarer still, sees a final product as solid as this one? These are the questions I had walking out of Tower Heist, a movie with a blatantly straightforward title and creativity foaming out of its pores. It’s far from perfect, but Heist delivers right where it counts.

Ben Stiller stars as Josh Kovacs, manager of the fanciest hotel in New York City, appropriately deemed “The Tower”. When the hotel’s billionaire owner Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is accused of fraud, effectively negating the staff’s salaries and retirement funds, a small group of angry workers led by Kovacs recruit streetwise criminal Slide (Eddie Murphy) to help them seek their revenge, in the form of $20 million cash, on Shaw. 

There’s some considerable talent on hand both in front of and behind the camera, with Ben Stiller, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Casey Affleck and Gabourey Sidibe leading the starring lineup and Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) directing. As aforementioned, though Stiller does a typically great job in his starring role, he stays pretty true to the conventions that ensured his rise to stardom (the straight guy in the midst of a bunch of craziness who still manages to be really funny). The true comedic stars here are Murphy and Broderick. 

Murphy’s Slide takes it to the max as a ridiculous stereotype of a New York street criminal, and his deliverance of a few particularly crude and/or offensive lines are both a little shocking given his relatively straight-laced recent past and hilariously difficult to catch in the midst of some very fast-paced conversations played brilliantly for comedy that, at some points, brought me to tears. Broderick, on the other hand, plays former accountant Mr. Fitzhugh, a broke chump whose apartment has just been foreclosed and whose wife has just left him with his children. It’s a truly tragic situation for the character, but Broderick plays it so straight when delivering these facts that you can’t help but feel sorry for him and also can’t help but laugh. His lightning-quick mathematic calculations are very amusing as well.

While Tower Heist is, at its core, a comedy, there are some moments of genuine suspense. Cars dangle down skyscrapers, characters climb through elevator shafts and, of course, the entire time the lovable felons are locked in a race against time with a very determined FBI agent. There are some genre conventions in the form of a couple very predictable twists that I still won’t spoil here, and on more than one occasion we don’t get quite enough time to accept what’s going on before the movie whisks us off to the next step in the plot, but these missteps can be mostly forgiven when an action/comedy does the action part this well. 

The devious plot conceived by Kovacs and Slide isn’t initially explained to the audience which is a little odd for a heist film but actually turns out to be a good choice on the writers’ part. As the heist unravels, we see each element fall into place. Though some diversions and tricks that the criminals put to use are a little cliched, the vast majority of the shenanigans that the heist brings forth are both hilarious and original. 

I won’t spoil anything, but I will say that the film ends on a surprisingly abrupt note. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The ending is satisfying and heartwarming, though bittersweet and impressively profound, especially for a film of this genre. 

Taking its mistakes into account, Tower Heist is exciting, clever, well acted, sharply written and consistently hilarious. All the important assets of a quality action/comedy are in place, and they’re put to use in a way that’s pretty hard to complain about. If you don’t mind looking past the uncreative title and occasional cliches, there’s a worthwhile time at the movies to be found here with just enough flashes of brilliance to overcome its flaws.

Final Score:

7.5/10
"Very Good"