Heist is a 2001 crime film written and directed by David Mamet, running 109 minutes. Gene Hackman plays Joe Moore, a veteran thief looking to retire, with Danny DeVito as his fence Mickey Bergman, Delroy Lindo as his partner Bobby Blane, and Sam Rockwell, Rebecca Pidgeon, Ricky Jay and Patti LuPone in support.

This is a good heist movie. It is not topping my favourite lists, but I loved how scenes went on for a long while and nobody said anything. They were just working away, doing stuff. No thousand cuts. Just them doing the job.

And I want to draw attention to how against the grain that reaction is, because David Mamet is a playwright first and foremost, and he is one of the most celebrated in America. His dialogue is so distinctive that people have a name for the style. Essentially every piece of writing about this film is about the talking. The line everyone quotes from it is Danny DeVito’s, which is that everybody needs money, and that is why they call it money. One contemporary reviewer wrote that you watch a Mamet picture for the lines and the comebacks. Another described it as the iambic pentameter of the profane.

Which means the element I came away admiring most is the one almost nobody writes about. The quiet. The procedure. The camera simply sitting there, holding, while professionals carry out a plan without narrating it.

That is a genuinely difficult thing to do, and it is a choice. The modern version of this film would cut that sequence forty times and lay a score underneath it to tell you how to feel. Mamet just lets it run.

Gene Hackman and Delroy Lindo. Such top tier actors.

CNN’s review at the time articulated this better than I managed. It said that if it were not for the participation of Hackman and Lindo, two terrific actors who seem utterly incapable of giving a disingenuous performance, there would be very little to believe about the picture. That is precisely the function they serve. The plot is a series of double crosses stacked on top of each other, and the only reason any of it carries weight is because those two men make it feel like work rather than plotting.

This is also the second Gene Hackman film I have covered on this site, after The Firm. And given that he has been gone since February of last year, this one landed a little differently than I expected it to when I pressed play.

Pay attention to this when you are watching it. There is a lot happening that you will miss otherwise.