It’s “Entrapment” without action and beauty of Catherine Zeta Jones. Basically as bland as a vanilla milkshake without the vanilla.

Robert DeNiro, Edward Norton, and Marlon Brando star as thieves who plan on breaking into the Montreal Customs House and steal a priceless scepter. There is a lot of doubts about the team working together and if they will be able to pull it off. Norton is just starting off his career. DeNiro wants one last “score” before he runs off and marries Angela Bassett. And Brando is trying to pay off an outstanding debt.

Director Frank Oz (most famous for being the magic behind Miss Piggy of the Muppets) takes on his first drama after a successful comedy career. Oz has always been a very precise and extremely detailed director. Often times I get the feeling Oz is scared of the editing room. Oz’s comedies worked because he had laughs to propel the plot along. Sadly this doesn’t happen in dramas and Oz pays for it dearly.

For this film to work better with Oz behind the lens, Oz needed to let go and let the magic of his stars manifest. It’s like squeezing an orange for a cup of juice. If you gently squeeze you are bound to get a lot of juice but if you mangle the orange into pieces you are left with a cup of pulp. It’s all pulp here, baby.

The performances of the film’s three leads are brilliant and they should be given their caliber. These could be three of the greatest actors representing three generations of filmmakers. The only performance I was useless was Bassett.

What this film needed was more than just one solitary plot twist and little or no action. Heist films are supposed to be intense with back-stabbing and suspense. Oz’s film is more like infinite elevator music in comparison. I have seen other heist movies that are extremely a lot better than this.

Aside from the mundane pacing, I had problems with the film’s dialogue. I was stumped to wise Oz had to show DeNiro being reluctant at least 5 times. There are a lot of dialogue scenes that needed to be cut because they retread over the same idea and plot a hundred times. I have watched a lot of DVD deleted scenes and often a director will say the scene was cut for that exact reason, “retreading of the same information we learned in a previous scene.” This goes back to my point that Oz is afraid of the editing booth.

One question that does baffle me is why this kind of film was released in July. It should have been released in October or November.

Ugh, what a waste of great talent. I do have a suggestion. Why not make the Norton character a woman and then erase the Bassett character. The sexual tension and battle of wits would have been a lot more interesting. But that’s just my opinion.

(2 of 5) So Says the Soothsayer.