The Movie
Tower Heist takes us behind-the-scenes with the world's best crew at the world's priciest, most exclusive residence, home to movie stars and moguls. Led by the good-hearted, extremely capable Josh (Ben Stiller), these building employees bond as a sort of blue-collar family, while doing everything to keep the white-collar tenants happy.
So when they are defrauded by the crooked Wall Street tycoon (Alan Alda) who lives in the penthouse, Josh is determined to make things right. His people have lost their entire pension fund, and the situation only gets worse when Josh is fired, so he soon decides to use his extensive knowledge of the place to plan a robbery, taking back from the smug, illicit businessman what is rightfully theirs. But with no criminal experience of his own, he must enlist the aid of former childhood pal Slide (Eddie Murphy), a small-time crook with much to teach his new partners.
Ben exudes tremendous charm as Josh, a loyal, hard-working mensch who refuses to be rolled over. And Eddie's back in his comedic groove as the fast-talking hood with personality to spare. The eclectic supporting cast also includes Matthew Broderick, Michael Peña and Oscar nominee Gabourey Sidibe, all of whom are given some big laughs. Tower Heist is a character-driven comedy, a caper flick as the title suggests, and a treatise on modern the current economic dichotomy, but while it more or less succeeds at all three, it doesn't really excel at any one.
Also read Karen Dahlstrom's review of Tower Heist, if you can steal away for a few minutes.
The Picture
The 2.4:1 Tower Heist was shot on a combination of digital video and 35mm film, and is presented here with a strong AVC bitrate of 30+ megabits per second. Even so, the quality here is not what I was expecting for a major studio film. Detail is natural and better than standard-def certainly, but never particularly impressive. Blacks are surprisingly flat and mushy, more than once calling attention to themselves for their nasty obfuscation of the image, which is also occasionally marred by some streaking, strobing and flicker.
The Sound
When reviewing a disc, we're always on the listen-out for any distinguishing characteristics in the soundtrack, and this doesn't happen a lot but there really were virtually none here. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is sufficiently clear and clean, Téa Leoni's raspy voice is well-preserved, and Christophe Beck's music wraps around the listener... but that's pretty much all I noted here As with the video, I found the effort here to be lackluster.
The Extras
Bonus-wise at least, this set doesn't disappoint. We begin with an audio commentary by director Brett Ratner, editor Mark Helfrich and screenwriters Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson. There are also two U-Control enhanced viewing modes, one providing a picture-in-picture experience and the other calling out information about the music in the current scene, and we can compile our own playlist to later purchase from iTunes.
Revealed here are two alternate endings and nine additional deleted/alternate scenes, about eight minutes all together. The four-minute gag reel is good for a chuckle, while Ratner's Video Diary is somewhat unpolished but insightful. And the six-part "Plotting Tower Heist" (45 minutes total) is as much about the history between Grazer and Ratner as about the movie. All of these video extras are in HD.
This disc supports BD-Live, as well as the pocket BLU app for mobile devices with enhanced control, portable bonus content and even Second Screen, which uses the handheld screen as the picture-in-picture window. This Second Screen content can also be sent to the TV by nimble fingers with the new interactive Flick View feature.
Disc Two is a DVD of the movie with all of the video extras except the Diary, although "Plotting" is slightly longer here in SD. Also included is a unique a printed code for an UltraViolet copy of Tower Heist as well as a Digital Copy for our choice of iTunes, Windows Media, VUDU or Amazon Instant Video.
Final Thoughts
Slightly by-the-numbers but moderately enjoyable nonetheless, Tower Heist provides an evening's escape without asking too much of the viewer. Apparently I'm asking too much of this disc however, as both audio and video were disappointing.
Product Details
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