Give your vertigo a workout with the fear of heights comedy caper TOWER HEIST (M).

Ben Stiller stars as Josh Kovacs, the building manager of a swank residential skyscraper whose penthouse dweller is Wall Street wanker, Arthur Shaw, played with arrogant charm by Alan Alda.

Shaw is a shonk, a charlatan, and a cheat under house arrest by the Feds charged with stealing $2 billion. Among his fraudulent financial fiddling is the pension plans of the building’s staff, working stiffs whose scrimping and saving are hard earned by bowing and scraping to stuck-up shysters like Shaw.

When Josh is sacked for displaying his outrage at the avaricious villain, he hatches a Robin Hood-ish plan to bust into swindler’s penthouse and repossess the misappropriated funds.

Pitting stupidity against cupidity, Josh employs petty thief, Slide, played by Eddie Murphy, to lead his motley crew of concierge, bellhop, doorman, maid and defaulting guest in the plunder of the pension plan pirate’s treasure trove he is convinced is secreted somewhere in the condo.

The film is from a screenplay by Ted Griffin who penned the remake of OCEAN’S ELEVEN and Jeff Nathanson, who wrote CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, and has some of the flavour of both those projects, a melding of the true amateur and the dubious professional.

Directed by Brett Ratner of the RUSH HOUR franchise, this is a competent caper movie without ever attaining the heights of the great heist movies.

As a wish fulfilment film about the corrupt rich copping it from those they think beneath them, it’s a fine sentiment, and it does have a surprise element concerning the stash and a genuinely thrilling fear of heights sequence.

Alan Alda as the shyster targeted by the heisters is terrific and along with Tea Leoni as the FBI agent assigned the case literally steal the show.

© Richard Cotter

23rd December, 2011