There's the smarmy Shaw, owner of one of Steve McQueen's hot-red Ferraris, whose sympathetic façade turns into haughty indifference when his duplicity is shown to have robbed the employees of their pensions.

The protagonists aren't embellished here the villains and secondary characters, though, are. In short, these aren't archetypes exaggerated for comic effect but rather hard workers earning their ephemeral shot at a small part of the American Dream.

They ride the subway back to comfortable, modest, outer-borough apartments. One of the characters studies for the bar exam during her downtime. Coming from diverse backgrounds that reflect the melting pot realities of modern New York, they're seen earning their paychecks by holding doors for the residents, cleaning their apartments, and making sure that precise individual needs are met. Rather than hurrying into a barrage of plot developments, Ratner spends spends considerable time showing the regular-guy protagonists on the job. Ratner keeps the action rooted to the here-and-now, offering a recession-times revenge fantasy where the motivations never feel fantastical, even if the heist itself does.įrom the start, the movie lays the groundwork for a cathartic payoff. But it's also a surprisingly effective social drama. This is, of course, Hollywood schlock, directed by shlock-master Brett Ratner ( Rush Hour). This might be the closest we'll get to mass entertainment with a conscience

Soon, a revenge plot is hatched, with Kovacs' con neighbor Slide (Eddie Murphy) enlisted to turn him, his brother-in-law (Casey Affleck), a former resident (Matthew Broderick), and a fired employee (Michael Peña) into a capable criminal team. Those employees include Josh Kovacs (Ben Stiller), director of operations at Shaw's New York City high rise, a thinly disguised version of the iconic Trump International Hotel & Tower. The pool belongs to Wall Street billionaire Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda), a Madoff-like figure who gets arrested for a Madoff-like fraud that evaporates his employees' pensions. It's a fitting opening salvo for a film that's been pitted as Hollywood's grand show of support for the 99 percenters. But it's not a bill: The camera pulls back to reveal that Ben Franklin's visage occupies the middle of a giant swimming pool perched atop a New York skyscraper. Tower Heist begins with a close-up of what appears to be a hundred-dollar bill.

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