Tower Heist – Review

Tower Heist is Bernie Madoff meets Ocean’s 11.

Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is a very wealth investment broker who seemingly has it all.  He lives in the penthouse of one of the most affluent apartment buildings in New York City.  Everyone that works in The Tower knows Arthur and treats him with a great deal of respect.

Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller) is the manager of The Tower, and knows each of the occupants by name.  He knows their birthdays, anniversaries, and what time they leave for work.  The inner workings of The Tower run like a well oiled machine thanks to Josh.  Josh has a special friendship with Arthur Shaw, he even plays chess with him, and orders cheese and wine for his parties.

On the way to work one morning Josh notices that Arthur is late heading to his office.  He starts to look on the security cameras and notices that Arthur is being kidnapped and being put in the back of a box truck.  Josh takes off in an attempt to rescue him.  Little does Josh know, but Arthur is trying to flee from arrest by the FBI.  The FBI arrests Arthur under charges of running a huge Ponzi scheme.

When Josh goes back to tell the staff of The Tower what has happened, he also tells them that he asked Arthur to managed the pension plan for the employees.  Soon, the employees find out that ALL of their money is gone.  Josh takes it upon himself to try to get their money back.

Josh enlists the help of one of the ex-tenents of The Tower, Matthew Broderick, his brother play by Casey Affleck, elevator operator Enrique Dev’Reaux (Michael Peña), and a local con artist Eddie Murphy.  Their plan is to break into Arthur’s apartment, find his hidden cash (estimated at 20 million dollars) and return it to the employees of The Tower.

My only complaints with this movie were that a few scenes seemed to be pulled directly from the movie Ocean’s 11.  There is one scene in particular where Josh is explaining to the other 3 his plan for breaking in, etc,.  This is the EXACT scene as in Ocean’s 11 where Danny tells his crew about his plan to break into the casino vault.

Overall, this was a very funny movie, and the casting was perfect.  Broderick played a nerdy investment broker very well, and Murphy played a con artist perfectly.  I would recommend waiting until this movie comes out on rental to see it.