November 9, 2001 | Joe Moore (Gene Hackman) is a professional thief, and he has been very good at his work for a very long time. He prides himself on preparing for every contingency -- "I wouldn't clear my throat without a back-up plan," he says, not bragging but merely informing -- and he maintains a resolutely unflappable attitude while conducting his risky business. He is such a cool customer, an associate marvels, that "when he goes to bed, sheep count him." But at the start of Heist, in the middle of the intricately planned and boldly executed robbery of a jewelry store, things start to go bad for the master criminal.

While scooping up sackfuls of the shiny merchandise, Joe realizes, too late, that he's being recorded on a security-camera tape. He finishes the job, of course, but he assumes his career is finished as well. So he figures that it's finally time to bid adieu to his long-time partners, Bobby Blane (Delroy Lindo) and Pinky Pincus (Ricky Jay), and retire far way in some tropical paradise -- or New Zealand, maybe -- with Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon), his much-younger wife.

But Bergman (Danny DeVito), Joe's fence, a sleazy little brute who employs ample muscle to enforce his whim of iron, has other ideas. Specifically, he wants Joe and his crew to pull off -- are you ready for this? are you sitting down? -- one last, big heist.

To make sure Joe does "the Swiss job," as it's ominously described throughout the film's first half, Bergman withholds payment for the jewelry store robbery. And to make sure Joe doesn't try anything clever - well, OK, anything more clever than usual -- the fence assigns his ambitious nephew, Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell), to join Joe's crew and generally keep an eye on things. Unfortunately, Jimmy isn't terribly bright. Worse still, he is a terrible thief. Worst of all, he keeps his eyes on Fran, to the exclusion of just about everything and everyone else he should be watching much more carefully.

It's a funny thing: Sometimes, you can go years without seeing something so simple, yet so rare, as a no-frills, ice-cold, dead-serious caper flick in the classic tradition. Within the space of just a few months, however, we've been treated to two such retro delights. First there was Frank Oz's The Score, an old-fashioned and uncommonly satisfying crime story with all the seductive craftsmanship and sophisticated elegance of a Tony Bennett standard or an Yves Saint Laurent original. Now we have Heist, a hardboiled, razor-sharp neo-noir drama written and directed with poker-faced cunning by David Mamet, the best Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who ever moonlighted as a moviemaker.

Breathing fresh life into stock characters and parody-worthy conventions, Mamet has concocted a plot that percolates with enough fake-outs, false clues, double whammies and triple-crosses to flummox the cagey con artists who prowled through two of his earlier films, House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner. Just as important, he supplies his world-class cast with reams of his trademark Mametian dialogue. The argot is instantly recognizable -- profane-poetic non sequiturs, obscenity-spiked outbursts employed as offensive weapons, innocuous phrases repeated until they have the potency of hammer blows -- and altogether appropriate for the artfully stylized hard cases working for, with and against each other here.

I can't identify who's talking, but here's one of my favorite exchanges: "Don't you want to hear my last words?" "I just did." Here's another: "Nobody lives forever, eh?" "Frank Sinatra gave it a shot." Quentin Tarantino, read it and weep.

Hackman plays Joe as a wary, world-weary pro who always has an exit route stored in the back of his brain, and who never looks surprised -- only, at worst, mildly annoyed or slightly disappointed -- whenever he's betrayed by a partner in crime. Even if you don't know anything about Hackman's recent, real-life, widely reported fisticuffs in the wake of a Sunset Boulevard traffic mishap, you won't have any trouble accepting the aging but agile fellow he portrays as a harder-than-nails tough guy.

But Hackman does more than just crack wise and crack heads. Here and there, he subtly suggests that Joe is much colder and craftier than even his intimates could possibly imagine. The pay-off comes in a final scene that is all the most wrenching because Mamet, slyly upending our expectations, doesn't try to improve on perfection with one last plot twist.

Lindo exudes a kind of baleful melancholy while portraying Bobby as an invaluable ally -- ferociously lethal in fights, briskly efficient on the job, good company during down time -- while DeVito offers a not-so-lovable variation of his familiar bantamweight-sleazeball persona. As Bergman, he gets his usual quota of laughs. But he also remains seriously menacing by hard-selling the character's low cunning and blustering amorality. "Everybody needs money," he snaps at Joe. "That's why they call it money." On paper, the line doesn't read like anything special. On screen, however, DeVito makes it sound at once broadly comical and whip-crack brutal.

By unfortunate contrast, Rockwell overplays the thick-headedness of his character; as a result, it's never easy to believe Jimmy poses a genuine threat to anyone other than himself.

Many of the other supporting players - including Pidgeon, a.k.a. Mrs. David Mamet, and Jay - are veteran members of what might be called Mamet's private repertory company. They know the rules of the game, and they play with practiced ease. Pidgeon is less archly affectless than usual, though she remains appropriately ambiguous as a femme fatale. A minor quibble, though: She and Hackman don't appear entirely comfortable during displays of mutual affection. Indeed, early in Heist, I began to suspect that, at some point, we'd discover that this woman who looks young enough to be his daughter really is his daughter.

But, no, Mamet has a much nastier twist than that in store for us. Good for him. Better for us.