Review: 'Tower Heist': a skyscraper caper

The first real comedy of the recession, Brett Ratner's bright, brassy, thoroughly entertaining "Tower Heist" ends with an amusingly straight-faced joke. It's in the closing credits: "Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental."

It's a necessary bit of legalese, but "Tower Heist" wouldn't exist without Bernard Madoff, the securities investor who reduced many a nest egg to zero in a $60-billion Ponzi scheme. He is transformed here, almost point by point, into Arthur Shaw, a working-class kid from Queens who now turns people's savings into his classic-car collection. Even if you pretend that Shaw (a wonderfully loathsome Alan Alda) is just a generic 1-percenter, "Tower Heist" offers the delicious fantasy of symbolically pushing him off his high rise.

Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovaks, manager of a Columbus Circle tower topped by Shaw's penthouse. Josh is part servant, part buddy: He and Shaw play online chess, a sign of impending gamesmanship. When Shaw is arrested for fraud, the building staffers discover that he also handled their pensions, promising tripled returns. Caribbean housekeeper Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe) delivers the movie's one genuinely mournful line: "I never asked anyone to triple my portfolio."

When Josh learns that Shaw has $20 million hidden in his apartment, he decides to pull a high-tech Robin Hood and steal it. His motley band includes dimwitted bellhop Enrique (Michael Peña); a Merrill Lynch bigwig reduced to penury, Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick); and a petty thief, Slide (Eddie Murphy). Casey Affleck plays Charlie, a knock-kneed concierge, and Téa Leoni is a hard-charging FBI agent.

The many characters crowd each other, and even the high-energy Murphy gets muffled. But the dialogue is sharp and Ratner is in his element directing an action-comedy spectacle complete with plummeting elevators, grappling hooks and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's a genuine crowd-pleaser -- for 99 percent of the crowd, at least.

PLOT Working stiffs try to steal back their money from a Madoff-like con man. RATING PG-13 (language, sexual references, mild action)

CAST Ben Stiller, Alan Alda, Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick

LENGTH 1:39

PLAYING AT Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE A bright, brassy action-comedy for the recession, with little guys worth rooting for and Alda as a wonderfully hissable villain

Back story: These holdup flicks still hold up

Here are four more notable "heist" movies:

* Rififi (1955) -- American filmmaker Jules Dassin created one of the archetypal heist movies with this French film noir about an aging gangster and his motley gang out to rob a high-end jeweler.

* The Killing (1956) -- In one of Stanley Kubrick's earliest films, a street-level story of veteran crook Sterling Hayden assembling a team for one last job, the director disposes of any romantic notions with his documentarylike style.

* Ocean's 11 (1960)/Ocean's Eleven (2001) -- There's classic camaraderie in this shaggy tale of a casino heist, whether it's Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack or George Clooney and his crew.

* The Italian Job (1969/2003) -- The British original and the U.S./U.K./France remake are both fun films, but c'mon: The first one's got Michael Caine, the other's got Mark Wahlberg.

-- FRANK LOVECE