The Underrated Crime Thriller That Brought Marlon Brando And Robert De Niro Together On Screen

In Frank Oz's 2001 film "The Score," Robert De Niro plays Nick, a master safe-cracker who is approached by a thief named Jack (Edward Norton) about a potentially lucrative heist. This is all suspicious from the jump, however, as Nick is usually recruited for heists by his fence and longtime associate Max (Marlon Brando). Jack seems to want to take control of the situation, which Nick doesn't care for. Like all the best heist movies, "The Score" is mostly a procedural, detailing how Nick and Jack plan to break into a safe that contains a valuable golden scepter. Cleverly, rather than crack the safe in a traditional fashion, Nick thinks to drill a hole in its top, fill it with water, and then lower a small bomb inside. The detonation will cause the water to expand and the door to blow off the safe. It's just physics.

Despite starring Brando and De Niro, Norton is the acting show-off in "The Score." One of the things his character does to throw off suspicions is to pose as a mentally disabled man with a speech impediment. Jack snaps in and out of his persona with ease, and one might immediately think of several speeches from "Tropic Thunder" about the fraught nature of playing mentally disabled people. Norton proves it's little more than actorly affect, in the process making "The Score" one of his own best movies.

Sadly, Oz doesn't roll with those themes, instead making a pretty straightforward thriller that just happens to star some of the best actors of their respective generations. "The Score" is weirdly laid back for a heist movie, featuring scenes of Nick and Max talking about how they're getting older and it would be nice to just have a calm afternoon. It's a solid enough film, but those expecting an intense confrontation between De Niro and Brando — a la De Niro and Al Pacino in "Heat" — will be sorely disappointed.

When it was released in 2001, many audiences were eager to see a De Niro/Brando scene because, of course, they played the same character in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" movies. Brando portrayed the elderly Vito Corleone in the first "Godfather" film, while De Niro played him as a young man in extended flashbacks in "The Godfather Part II." One might expect Oz to stage the two actors as rivals, allowing them to threaten one another and recapture their respective Godfathers' propensity for violence. In "The Score," though, the pair do not play violent men. Indeed, their characters are more than willing to leave their pasts behind them and retire peacefully. There's a gentle affability between De Niro and Brando that I think a lot of mainstream audiences didn't expect.

"The Score," more than anything, is an acting showcase for its three leads, and they all avail themselves well. Oz, however, didn't create a great deal of character complexity, nor did the film's credited screenwriters (Daniel E. Taylor, Kario Salem, Lem Dobbs, and Scott Marshall Smith) bother with big, demonstrative speeches. There's nothing showy about "The Score." It's all very understated. It also proved to be Brando's final onscreen performance before his passing in 2004.

Oz's film wasn't a box office success, making $113.5 million on a $68 million budget. It was, however, reasonably well-reviewed and currently sports a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 129 reviews. Some critics hated its lack of energy (A.O. Scott's review in the New York Times was wholly negative), although Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half stars, calling it one of the best heist movies he'd seen in years. Most critics seemed to like the slow pace and the mellow acting by the film's screen legends.