User Reviews

Spoilers herein:

A ex-con safecracker (Christopher Walken) trying to live on the straight and narrow is enticed into doing one more job by people he may not be able to trust (a shady security guard, an Irish drifter, a little league coach). He cases the building where the robbery is to take place and meets a colorful lock expert (Tom Noonan in a characteristically excellent small performance) who helps him construct a mock-up of the safe. The job goes wrong, but the ex-con is bailed out in the end. Sound familiar? So we've seen this film dozens of times. It is then something of a miracle that "The Opportunists" works as well as it does.

Myles Connell's directorial debut is a relentlessly low-key, relatively low-budget, character driven neo-noir that satisfies because Connell never gives in to expectations and refuses to overwrite the characters. All the obligatory scenes are here; Walken visits an elderly relative whom he provides for; makes a mess of his legitimate business (auto-repair); is threatened by creditors; pleads (sort-of) with his girlfriend not to throw him out; practices on a mock-up safe while his partners watch, etc. In the hands of a lesser actor, this could all have been deeply mediocre, but Walken glides through this with the humble grace, and the quiet defiance of someone almost fatalistically detached from his own life and choices, but with a core of decency that we respond to without feeling manipulated. All the supporting players do a fine job, but this is Walken's picture, and Walken is a great actor, one of the greatest working today.

Watch how subtly Walken plays the early scenes where he refuses to take the job, and how consistently Connell has his actors play "emotional" scenes in a minor-key. Connell could have written "big" emotional scenes, could have given his characters dozens of one-liners, "zingers," but then he would have made "The Score" or "Heist." The Opportunists is better than either of these films, better too than "Ocean's Eleven." All these films tread similarly well-worn thematic paths, but The Opportunists aspires to the upper echelons of neo-noir drama thanks to smart, restrained direction and the presence of Walken.

"The Opportunists" is finely acted. Obviously the writer/director gave strict orders to all the actors to use a subdued style. I usually prefer movies with this style because it makes the movie more realistic although a little less exciting. This is the main reason why "Rosemary's Baby" is a great film while "The Exorcist", although more exciting, is a very good film. Back to "The Opportunists". The director's overall style, mood, and pace were excellent too. Christopher Walken's performance was the best part of the movie but that shouldn't surprise anyone. Then why does this movie go beyond failing miserably? Warning!, the criticism I am about to give will give away key plot twists. The movie fails miserably because it completely falls apart during the middle of the heist scene where Christopher Walken's partner, shockingly and (I claim) intentionally, locks Walken inside the money vault of an armored car company then presses the alarm button. This act of sabotage would make perfect sense if Walken's partner either stood to gain by the act or was out for revenge. Not only does Walken's partner not gain by this treacherous deed; he greatly hurts himself! At the moment when the partner slammed the vault door between himself and Walken, the following facts existed: * The partner had one small bag of cash (the viewer is never told how much) in his hand, while there were many more bags and boxes of cash remaining in the money vault where Walken stood. If I had to estimate the percentage of cash in the partner's bag vs. all the cash, I would say 10%. In other words, Walken's partner could have gotten about 25% (because there were 4 partners overall) of all the cash in the vault but opted for just 10%. Was he blind? Did he not see all the boxes of cash inside the vault? * There was no time pressure on Walken and his partner to collect all the cash in the vault because once Walken had solved the combination lock, the alarm was knowingly disabled. Also, the 2 guards who were sitting just outside the vault were in on the caper. So they had hours (maybe as many as 6) to collect all the paper cash (we are not talking about heavy gold bars or large paintings). Walken and his partner could have transferred all the cash to a car outside the building in about 15 minutes! * By intentionally locking Christopher Walken in the vault, the partner knows that Walken will be apprehended. Doesn't the partner realize that if Walken is apprehended, Walken and the 2 security guards will tell the police everything they know about the partner including a physical description, his accent (Irish), and where to find fingerprints that he left in Walken's house and business! Since the partner was clearly reducing his own chances of a clean getaway with a large take, then the only other explanation for intentionally locking Walken and the money in the vault was revenge. This scene would make sense if it turned out that the partner had a secret hatred for Christopher Walken. I was expecting the movie to show that many years earlier (when Walken was a steady safe cracker) that Walken either stole from the partner's father or bumbled some aspect of a heist which caused the partner's father to do jail time thereby forcing the partner to grow up fatherless. But no such explanation ever came to fruition. Less than an hour after the partner runs away from the alarm with the money bag in hand, he enters a train station ready to continue his getaway but never gets on the train. He just turns around, exits the train station and eventually apologizes to Walken. The final 1/2 hour of the movie is so detached from reality that it ruins all the good aspects of the earlier part of the movie: * Christopher Walken is let out of jail with no bail! * The main police investigator hires Walken to repair his own personal car (this is not undercover work)! * The owner of the armored car company doesn't press charges (doesn't want bad publicity concerning laundered money) * Walken and his treacherous partner become more friendly as if nothing happened! * The 4 thieves get to keep and spend their small take with no apparent pressure from the police! * Basically everyone lives happily ever after! Keep in mind that this movie is clearly not directed for kids who might overlook an illogical plot twist like it has. In a world where most movies fall apart at the end, I nominate this one as the all time king of movies which fall apart at the end and are not science fiction. Another way of stating this award I bestow on "The Opportunists" is it has the highest ratio of believability in the beginning of the movie to believability in the end of the movie. This movie's only usefulness should be as required viewing at film schools to demonstrate the tendency to rush through the end of movies thereby ruining them. If the writer/director was trying to make a study of a smart, talented safe cracker surrounded by 3 incompetents as opposed to 2 incompetents and 1 saboteur then this scene still does not make sense because Walken's partner did not act incompetently when he shut the vault door; he clearly acted intentionally. The words that he used and his facial expressions clearly show him closing the vault door intentionally. I finally came to the logical conclusion (just to stop my mind from short circuiting) that the writer/director may have been stating that sometimes a person can be so incompetent that he appears to be acting as a saboteur, even though he is not. If the director intended for the partner to lock Walken in intentionally then can anyone out there answer why the partner locked Walken in?

Warning: contains spoiler

This movie, in the way it was crafted, reminded me of the craftsmanship of the great films of the forties. (Casablanca, African Queen, Mildred Pierce, to name a few of my favorites) That is, straightforward in telling the story and no superfluous fluff. The screenwriters could have easily gone astray in this film by adding love scenes between the daughter and the boy or even Lauper and Walken's character, but they deftly avoided this and stuck to the story. I enjoyed each and every performance and it is a shame that because of the Academy's focus on mainstream cinema Christopher Walkens will probably be overlooked at Oscar time. He conveyed so much with his facial expressions alone that it is easy to watch this movie again just for his low key performance.

My favorite scene in the film was where the Walkens character is practicing opening safes and his cohorts are watching this. Near the end of it they are shown asleep on the couch while Vic is still hard at work on the locks. This reminded me of the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane who slept while Christ 'watched'. I am not saying Walkens character is a Christ figure. But in this he and Christ were at one: they took their craft seriously. And later when the 'disciples' begin to loose faith in Walken's character he confidently parades out of the house and announces that the next day the heist will come down.

One minor glitch: Walkens character didn't impress me as the type who would botch an automobile repair job; so at that point I felt something was fishy, but I quickly forgot about that fact and rode the crest of the story. The minor characters were all equal to their roles and I was pleasantly pleased with Cindy Lauper. Give this one 9 out of 10 and hope it garners a Oscar nomination.