GAMBIT (2012)

Genre: Comedy
Director: Michael Hoffman
Cast: Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz, Alan Rickman, Tom Courtenay, Stanley Tucci, Cloris Leachman, Anna Skellern, Togo Igawa, Sarah Goldberg, Silvia Crastan
RunTime: 1 hr 29 mins
Rating: TBA
Released By: MVP & Golden Village Pictures
Official Website: www.facebook.com/MVP.com.sg

Opening Day: 21 March 2013

Synopsis:  Private art curator Harry Deane (Colin Firth) devises a finely-crafted scheme to con England's richest man and avid art collector, Lionel Shabandar, (Alan Rickman) into purchasing a fake Monet painting. In order to bait his buyer, he recruits a Texas rodeo queen (Cameron Diaz) to cross the pond and pose as a woman whose grandfather liberated the painting at the end of WWII.

Movie Review:

Let’s get this out of the way: the opening credits pretty much reveal most of the major plot points. That said, the animated sequence also sets the tone for the quirky humour that ensues in this remake of the 1966 film of the same name.

Putting his stiff upper lip into good use yet again is Colin Firth as Harry Deane, a rather hapless private art curator with higher ambitions than working for his megalomaniac boss, media magnate Lionel Shabandar (Alan Rickman, fully exercising his talent for disdainful superiority). Deane’s impression of Shabandar is decidedly worse than his egotistical, power-hungry image -- after all, the man has an autobiography simply entitled Me -- but undermining his enemy nearly foils his plans of blindsiding his boss. The initial plan is simple: Deane gets his trusty accomplice The Major to forge Monet’s Haystacks (Dusk), a painting that Shabandar has been hunting for since acquiring the accompanying piece Haystacks (Dawn) years ago, then engages Texan rodeo star PJ Puznowski (Cameron Diaz, sporting a toned body and a Mid-Western accent) as the painting’s owner who is willing to negotiate a sale at $12 million pounds, with Deane affirming the artwork’s authenticity to Shabandar.

Bearing in mind that scriptwriters Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, Burn After Reading, No Country for Old Men) are experts at unfolding Murphy’s Law on-screen with their storylines, Deane’s plan looks increasingly like the Titanic with more than a few icebergs in its way: PJ’s take-charge brashness and complete lack of decorum (never underestimate a girl who can take down a sprinting goat in double-quick time) prevents Deane from fully calling the shots; his boss’s skepticism of his capabilities and unforeseen enamour of PJ; his own developing feelings for her; and a competitor in the form of German curator Martin Zaidenweber (Stanley Tucci). In the end, the gambit is where Deane sacrifices the replica to prove his talent as a curator and to snub Shabandar, while stealing his boss’s authentic Haystacks (Dawn) and selling it for a hefty profit.

Viewers are likely to either love or hate the film’s humour, which plays up cultural stereotypes and cross-Atlantic differences. Everyone overacts here, and while the chemistry between Firth and Diaz is somewhat lacking, their amusing, rapidfire banter livens up their screen time together. It’s a little better for Rickman and Diaz; the two look like they’re actually having fun in their scenes where both characters are apparently marvelling at the extreme differences between being an upper-class English millionaire and an American blonde from Texas who works for minimum wage plucking chickens. 

Movie Rating:

(Entertaining and funny if the humour is up your alley, or if you have a thing for heist movies or their requisite twists, otherwise you may be better off giving this one a miss)

Review by Wong Keng Hui