Stanley Tucci headlines Masterplan (now on Prime Video), a heist comedy in which he plays the mastermind of a masterplan to steal a masterwork.
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he → headline → masterwork
Co-starring Simona Tabasco (The White Lotus) and Victor Belmondo, the film seeks to tweak the genre formula in a couple of different ways — but whether that results in anything particularly notable is the question.
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results → Co → anything
Chiara (Tabasco) operates in Rome, using high-tech whatchajiggers to facilitate her thievery.
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Chiara → operate → thievery
Jay (Belmondo) is in Paris, and his speciality is mini explosives that let him neatly slice open a safe and then boof a hole in the wall to escape.
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him → let → wall
The plot summons them to Lake Como in Italy for a meet-cute of crooked minds that think alike, and their flirting quickly becomes awkward after they learn they’re half-siblings.
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they → summon → minds
The parent they share is Roger (Tucci), who rigged this charade in order to reveal his parentage — and recruit them for his grand plan to snatch the Mona Lisa, no big deal.
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who → share → Lisa
Now, I can hear your thoughts in my mind’s ears: Is it a bit much of a coincidence that two siblings who never met are both masterly thieves?
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who → hear → coincidence
Yeah, our suspension of disbelief hangs by a fraying thread,
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suspension → hang → thread
the script spews something about “DNA” then quickly distracts us with a sub-Guy Ritchie flash-forward in which Roger narrates The Plan in a thinks-it’s-clever sequence set to bouncy, uptempo music.
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Roger → spew → music
You know, he’ll do this and then she’ll do that and then bompity-bompity-chakka-chakka-waaa!, they got the world’s most valuable painting in their mitts.
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they → know → mitts
As they study the plan and their roles in it, Chiara and Jay quickly learn the art of sibling bickering while Roger reads The Single Dad’s Survival Guide.
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Roger → study → Guide
Chiara’s techawhatsises can do almost anything, because she’s a Movie Hacker.
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she → do → anything
Jay can weasel out of any tough spot because he’s a Movie Sneaker-Arounder.
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he → weasel → spot
And Roger is almost certainly more than meets the eyeball, because Stanley Tucci is so good at duplicitiousness.
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Tucci → meet → duplicitiousness
So yes, the twists start stacking up like cordwood, no surprise there.
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twists → start → cordwood
Because in movies like this it’s less about the existence of twists and more about when they’ll finally stop.
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they → ’ → twists
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?
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It → remind → You
I’m sorry to say that Masterplan doesn’t have much going for it beyond Tucci’s usual fastidious, quick-witted persona.
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Masterplan → ’m → persona
The sibling thing is the wrinkle Masterplan adds to all the usual components of the slick heist comedy, a decent-enough idea that the writing fails at every level.
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writing → add → level
The screenplay takes an emotional throughline with creative potential and squanders it, the estranged-sibling/father stuff fully half-assed, an ill-considered and unconvincing veneer of sentimentality over all the usual plot machinery of sub-par master-thief movies that convince no one of their wit save for themselves.
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that → take → themselves
And they are so often pleased with how they dole out double- and triple- and sextuple-crosses, aren’t they?
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they → dole → crosses
So familiarity is a hurdle the film has to clear, and style is the Acme Rocket Shoes it can strap on to achieve that – note the brand, here deployed because I’m trying to tell you that the film ends up slamming face-first into a canyon wall.
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film → have → wall
Masterplan director Thomas Vincent is content to coast on preestablished Ritchieisms and Ocean’s (Fill in the Number) maneuvers and never bothers to attempt even the slightest innovation.
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Vincent → coast → innovation
Technically, the movie is slapped-together, and tonally, it’s uninspired, its comic timing DOA, the cast unable to wring a meager laugh out of a bland screenplay that leads to a devolves into drivel.
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that → slap → drivel
The story could conceivably go on forever as long as it keeps tacking on “clever” little twists, but lord help us, this movie already gives us enough for three movies.
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movie → go → movies
Our Call: I’m forgetting Masterplan existed even as I type this.
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I → forget → this
Werner Herzog hugged him once.
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Herzog → hug → him
The Aporia
