I have seen most of Mamet's work, and I guess, if pressed, I would cite House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner as being superior to this movie. However, I found Heist enjoyable on its own level, and see no need to chastise Mamet for not having some deep message here. I'm not really a big fan of the sub-genre of big score movies. They are all riddled with cliches. The recent Score had the same basic plot(a master thief wants to quit the trade), and that film had even less plausibility than Heist. Entertainment movies are all unrealistic, and Heist is certainly superior to 95% of the routine releases coming out of Hollywood today. I see it as a nice little homage to 40s film noir. I have to presume that many being hyper-critical of Heist would have been less than receptive to The Big Sleep or Out of the Past, had they encountered them when they were first released. Mamet is not ever going to appeal to a wide audience. He won't lower his standards so that the great unwashed can understand his films. SPOILER follows! My favorite exchange between Hackman and DeVito: DeVito: "Don't you want to hear my last words?" Hackman: "I just did."
