Mark Wahlberg stars as career criminal Charlie Croker, who assembles a gang of crooks to help him pull off a huge gold heist. To escape, they create the largest Los Angeles traffic jam in history with the aid of some traffic light and computer trickery. Wahlberg and crew, meanwhile, make their getaways on sidewalks, through the subways, and across Hollywood's Walk of Fame in their souped-up but tiny BMW Mini Coopers, squeezing through alleyways and tunnels to safety.
Wahlberg is joined by Edward Norton as a partner in crime, Charlize Theron as a sexy safecracker, a computer genius played by Seth Green and Donald Sutherland's veteran criminal.
To create the extensive L.A. traffic jam, the films producers shut down two blocks of Hollywood Boulevard, right where Mann's Chinese Theater and the Kodak Theater are located, and one of the city's most popular tourist spots. The results were cars at a standstill on film and in real life. The shoot affected traffic from the south of Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley for a week.
With The Italian Job, Wahlberg is fast becoming Hollywood's remake master. Counting the current movie, three of his past four flicks have been remakes. He took over the Charlton Heston role in 2001's Planet of the Apes and starred in The Truth About Charlie, a 2002 redo of 1963's Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn film Charade.
The 2003 F. Gary Gray-directed The Italian Job does pay a subtle homage to its roots. In one scene, Michael Caine -- the star of the original The Italian Job -- is seen on a large-screen television in a clip from his famous movie Alfie.
The Italian Job original, made in 1969, is now considered a British caper cult classic. And unlike the 2003 version, the heist and later plot actually take place in Italy.
Caine is the original movie's ringleader, who leads the gold heist and the subsequent wild Mini Cooper car chases galore on the sidewalks, rooftops, sewers, and rivers of Turin, Italy. (Decades later, stock footage from the film could be seen in the 1980s television series McGuyver, made by the same studio as the movie -- Paramount.)
The famous ending, when the gang's bus teeters on the side of a cliff, was not liked by the cast and crew, the movie's screenwriter recently revealed to Esquire magazine. Troy Kennedy Martin also said that director Peter Collinson hated it so much that he made his assistant film it.
Joining Caine in the very British cast were comedian Benny Hill and actor/writer Noel Coward, in his last film appearance. He reportedly had to be coaxed out of self-imposed exile in Switzerland to play the role and was not in good health on the set.
Adding a groovy beat to the breakneck action was future "We Are the World" producer Quincy Jones, who has scored films from the 1960s to the current "Austin Powers" series. And although he has a pop star past, Wahlberg made no musical contributions to the 2003 The Italian Job. Before becoming a movie star, Wahlberg was known in the early 1990s as rapper Marky Mark and brother to one of the members of teen group New Kids on the Block.
by Amy Cox
