Las Vegas Sun  March 13, 2014   Scene Selection — Geoff Carter:
‘Italian Job’ is only a part-time effort  Geoff Carter is a
Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer.
Reach him at [email protected]  I'm a complete sucker for heist
movies. I love seeing characters huddled around blueprints, a
woman in a cocktail dress stealing a passkey from a drunken
security guard, car chases, lock-picking, synchronized watches.
If "Citizen Kane" had a heist scene, I'd watch it every day.
That said, I don't think I'll come back to F. Gary Gray's remake
of the classic Michael Caine heist picture, "The Italian Job"
(Paramount DVD, $29.99) as often as I return to Kane's Xanadu.
It's not that it's a bad film -- it's an enjoyable romp, as the
critics say. But it is lopsided.  Take Mark Wahlberg's Charlie
Croker, a role assayed by Caine in the original film. As he was
in "The Truth About Charlie" -- a pointless remake of Stanley
Donen's "Charade" -- Wahlberg is miscast as a smooth-talker. His
character is earn