Plot
Safe-cracker John Bridger (Donald Sutherland) has arranged for one final job in Venice, Italy and calls his daughter Stella (Charlize Theron) before the heist attempt. Bridger meets with planner Charlie Croker (Mark Whalberg) and the rest of their team: Steve, the "inside man" (Edward Norton); Handsome Rob, their driver (Jason Statham); "Left Ear", their explosives expert (Mos Def); and Lyle, their technology expert (Seth Green). They successfully recover a safe containing $35 million in gold. While celebrating in the alps, they talk about what they are going to buy after they split the money six ways. When it is Steve's turn, he is unable to think of anything and simply says that he will buy the same things suggested by everyone else.
While driving on a narrow road, the team is stopped by armed men. They are revealed to be Steve's contacts when he betrays the group by killing John and firing on the others. A year later, Charlie and the team have located Steve who lives in a mansion in Los Angeles under a new identity, and is attempting to launder the gold through a jeweller, Yevhen (Boris Lee Krutonog). Planning to recover the gold before it can be moved, Charlie contacts Stella, now a professional safe-cracker for law enforcement, and convinces her to help them.
The team deactivates Steve's Internet and TV from a roadside box prompting him to call the cable company. They arrange for Stella (the only member Steve would not recognize) to enter his house and pose as a cable technician to locate the safe. Steve expresses interest in Stella while she is pretending to fix the cable and asks her for a date. Stella tells him yes in order to guarantee a time when he will be away. Charlie's initial plan is to steal the gold during this window of opportunity and to drive through the mansion in three Mini Coopers, modified by Rob's mechanic friend Wrench (Franky G) to handle the weight of the gold. Lyle infects traffic light control computers run by the city of Los Angeles in order to ensure their escape. Meanwhile, Steve meets with Yevhen again only to find out that he knew about the heist in Venice. Steve kills Yevhen to keep him silent, unaware that Yevhen is the cousin of the local Ukrainian crime boss Maskhov (Olek Krupa).
Charlie calls off the plan when they find that Steve's next-door neighbors are having a party that night. This forces Stella to go on the date with Steve to avoid attracting attention. This does not go as planned and Steve identifies Stella as John Bridger's daughter. Charlie confronts Steve, warning him that they will find a way to recover the gold and avenge John's death. Put on the defensive, Steve arranges to move the gold. Charlie's team sees that Steve, watching from a helicopter above, has enlisted three armored trucks, two to act as decoys. With Lyle's help, they determine which truck holds the gold and use the traffic lights to manipulate the truck to a designated spot. There, they detonate explosives under the street, dropping the truck into an empty subway tunnel. Having driven the Mini Coopers into the subway just before a train blocked the entrance to it, Charlie and his team have a head start on Steve's security team. This buys them enough time for Stella to crack the safe revealing $27 million worth of gold inside.
As the three Mini Coopers loaded with gold drive out, Steve gives chase in his helicopter. Charlie gets Steve to corner him in a garage and is able to render the chopper unflyable with a risky driving manoeuvre. Steve eventually catches up to the train yard where the team has gathered and opens the boxcar where he thinks the gold is stashed. Instead he finds Charlie waiting for him. Steve threatens Charlie at gunpoint, but is captured by Maskhov's men. Charlie reveals that he told Maskhov about Steve stealing the gold and killing Yevhen; Maskhov accepts a share and takes Steve with him. Eager to buy what they joked about in Italy, the team members split up the remaining gold and go their separate ways, with Charlie and Stella staying together.
Read more about this topic: The Italian Job (2003 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)