De Niro plays Nick Wells, a precision thief who practices his profession away from his home town of Montreal where he runs a jazz club and has a convenient relationship with flight Attendant Diane, Angela Bassett. Nick is talked into one last job by his fence Max, Marlon Brando, despite the fact that the job involves the Montreal Customs House where a priceless sceptre is being exceptionally well guarded and the fact that it means working with a rookie, Jackie Teller, Edward Norton who is pretending to be intellectually challenged in his inside job at the Customs. There are tensions right from the start....Apparently there were `artistic differences` between Marlon Brando and director Frank Oz, who`s better known for lightweight comedies like Bowfinger, Brando allegedly directed by de Niro, brings a gorgeous mischievousness and that wondrous charisma to the role of Max. De Niro plays the smart unemotional character we`ve come to appreciate so well - no surprises in that performance, and Edward Norton completes the generation trilogy by bringing credibility to a potentially problematic role. There`s a nice degree of character development that you yearn for in heist movies - well, any movies really - and a competence if not greatness in the direction.
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