The Score (2001)

Robert De Niro and Ed Norton "score" in this familiar tale of 3 Professional Crooks stealing a Royal Scepter from the Montreal Customs House. Norton shows his versatility while De Niro plays his standard super-cool expert The Supporting cast of Marlon Brando and Angela Bassett do less well. Cast as De Niro's girl friend Bassett isn't give much to do except kiss De Niro and sing a song*. Which brings us to Brando.

Marlon Brando

The 75 year old Brando  - in his last role - shows up for about 20 minutes (five scenes) playing "Max" the financier/fence. Grossly overweight, and sounding like Truman Capote on helium, he plays the whole movie sitting down**. Little acting is required. Mostly its just Brando and De Niro chit-chatting and Brando pleading with De Niro to take "the job". Frankly, a dozen actors in Hollywood could have done as well.  But no doubt De Niro and Norton wanted to work with Brando.

Summary: Well directed heist film, with some good acting by De Niro and Norton, But no more than that. The script is the weak point. Padded out with gratuitous profanity, we're not given much character development or reason to root for the crooks - other than its De Niro and Brando. Rated above average - but low on rewatchability***.

Notes
* = Its not clear how tall Ms. Bassett is, but several times we see De Niro bending down to kiss her. Once while she's standing in the street while De Niro is up on the curb. And after the second kiss, we can see De Niro's lifts as he walks away.
** = Brando Sitting down AND trying to hide the radio earpiece that's relaying the dialogue. In the last scene, Brando has a towel wrapped around his neck for that sole purpose, but you can still see it.
*** = For the most part, the actual heist moves so quickly, you ignore the implausibilities. It only fails at the very end, SPOILER when Norton runs off with a piece of metal he thinks is the royal scepter. Of course, in real life, Norton would have looked inside the bag before he left, or noticed that jewel encrusted specter felt like a big hunk of metal.  And why would De Niro tote around a 30 lbs piece of metal on the 1,000-1 chance that Norton would try to steal it?