The Italian Job (2003)

The Italian Job is a great film if you're into heist-thriller type movies. This movie, however, has more than just flashy techniques and fast cars. It shows you the guts of a plan and real world-like scenarios that thieves must get around. During the movie, I had the feeling that this could actually be done (with, of course, the right resources and team ... especially an expert computer hacker).

The actors of the film play their roles extremely well. We have Jason Statham as the badass, Mos Def as the bomb tech, Charlize Theron as the sexy safe cracker, Mark Whalberg in his usual center-of-attention role, and (my personal favorite) Seth Green as the expert computer hacker. Seth's character is not only the funniest of the crew, but he is arguably the most crucial to the success of the heist.

Even though the movie portrays hardened thieves as heroes doing seemingly heroic things, I'd say the film is very successful in distracting you from reality for about two hours. By the time you're finished, I guarantee you'll want to go steal $35 million in gold from some beautiful house in Venice, too!

Blake Homan