I saw the movie this weekend and love it (especially compared to the third-rate piece of trash that was the second feature).
Ebert wasn’t wrong about the weight of the bars. Everyone seems to have forgotten that, after the chase, the bars were loaded onto another* boat. Granted, it didn’t have a high-speed chase, but it didn’t look likely it would carry the weight of the bars, either.
IIRC, that “paint” was some sort of explosive to blow the floor so the safe would fall (there’s no reason to mark the spot otherwise). It had to be applied accurately and they did use some sort of laser system to ensure that.
They didn’t have unlimited time. How fast can a forklift go? It’d never reach the armored car in time to unload it. And they can’t load the forklift onto a truck; that won’t fit in the subway.
That scene you mentioned took place in Hollywood, right in front of the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre where comic book characters frequently appear. When I was in LA a few weeks back for E3, we saw Batman, Captain America and Spiderman there.
I’ve been more bored at other movies, but this WAS about as cliched a movie as you’re ever going to see. If you have fun and that doesn’t bother you, cool. But there wasn’t a thing in this movie that wasn’t totally telegraphed in the first five minutes Come on. The SECOND Donald Sutherland started talking to his daughter, you knew he was going to die. You knew Steve was going to double-cross them within his first .5 seconds onscreen. You knew Wahlberg and Theron were going to end up together even though they had little chemistry and she had no reason to like him. And on it goes…
I agree with LuckiChaarms about the ending. They did everything they could to make you hate Edward Norton - to a silly degree, I thought (I was ready to yell “Okay, he’s the bad guy, we get the point!” - and then at the end, it goes “He’s going to be tortured and murdered! Ha-ha! Everybody cheer now!”
I think we established that Ebert was right, but what was there to understand?
By the way, does it trouble anyone else that the armored car fell so far through the street and the guards were unharmed?
Not to mention that it landed on its wheels with virtually no debris underneath? What is the distance between the top of the subway tunnel (or maybe they were in a flood control pipe at that point) and the street, anyway? It looked like about 5 feet or so.
