I want to pre-face this review by saying that I have not seen the original The Italian Job. I really want to but unfortunately I have not found a way to watch it yet, so when I saw the remake pop-up on Netflix I knew I had to add it to my list, and while it isn’t the original, it was still very enjoyable.

The Italian Job follows a group of thieves who do a big heist in Italy and steal millions of dollars worth of gold and then one of their comrades turns on them and steals it all and kills one of them in the process.

This leads onto the rest of the group deciding to go after this lone thief for what he has done and steal the money back, and they do this in a very interesting way which involves Mini Coopers and hacking traffic systems.

My first car was a Mini Cooper, I absolutely loved her, and all through my life I have grown up with Minis so watching this film really did make me miss my car quite a bit, but I found it really enjoyable. I know in the original because of its age the cars that were used were the original Mini Coopers and these are obviously the newer versions of them, but seeing that modernisation really helped place the film and it’s time and didn’t make it feel too similar to the original in my opinion.

I really enjoy heist shows from Oceans 8 to Hustle and so watching this, while it did feel a bit outdated because it is very early noughties style of filmmaking, it was still an enjoyable watch and to be honest it did just make me want to watch the original even more to see what similarities and differences there were. That’s not saying that this movie was a bad one but I think when you’ve got such an iconic film being remade you’re always going to compare them.

But in my opinion I believe this film, whether you watch the original or not, is still a good film to watch. It has all the usual heist moments within it, it has the double crossing, it has the tragic backstory, and it has all the excitement that you’d hope for especially watching the Mini Coopers driving through the subway system and all the close calls – they were really engaging and fun and I would happily watch this movie again.

Would I recommend it over the original? I don’t know. I haven’t seen the original but I do feel that this film is in its shadow quite a bit. I would recommend it, but maybe for people who don’t enjoy watching classic movies and want something a bit more modern because it gives you the same sort of elements of the original but just with a shiny new look.

What do you think of The Italian Job remake?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding