Pun Salad

As promised/threatened yesterday in my David Mamet f-bomb anecdote, I dropped a few bucks on Amazon Prime to watch this 2001 movie, which he wrote and directed. A star-studded cast! In addition to the names on the poster to your right, there's also Sam Rockwell, Ricky Jay, Patti LuPone, and Mrs. Mamet, Rebecca Pidgeon. Nearly all on the wrong side of the law, and demonstrating that there is, with few exceptions, no honor among thieves.

It starts with a daring and successful jewelry heist, but kingpin Danny DeVito uses it as leverage to coerce master crook Gene Hackman into going after a bigger score. It is the fabled "one last job": a plane carrying a whole bunch of Swiss gold. (That's kind of a spoiler, sorry; we learn about the job solely from the characters talking obliquely about it. And not until it actually occurs do we realize: Oh, that's what they were talking about.

Mamet's dialog is also gold, of course. Are real-world bad guys clever enough to talk like this? I suppose if anyone would know, it would be Mamet.