I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Blistering performances.

I watched this movie at least five times (yes, five times!) and I want more of it. Like a previous reviewer opined, the more I return to watch this movie, the more I liked it.This has got to be one of the best known examples of why people who write reviews must breathe in deeply and exhale slowly before they assume the role of butcher working on someone else's hard work. Those who expected gratuitous violence can be excused for their disappointments.Forget the theme of the movie and take a lateral view on some of the smaller characters portrayed for a second. Consider the dialogue between the Asian-looking female bar tender to the character of Richmond Arquette. His response is so, so true concerning men who find themselves down who fall in love with well off ladies in the hope of having a place to sleep. Yes, the abandoned warehouse he sleeps in is better than taking advantage of a woman who expected love for the sake of hitching a ride to comfort. Also consider the impulsive and impetuous character of De'aundre Bonds against that of Robert Wisdom. Lots of funny dialogue there. Then again think of the scene of an exasperated character played by Ice T shooting at the armoured car on finding that their plan was increasingly attracting audience.Forget the bad reviews. If you found yourself with nowhere to go on a rainy Saturday morning, watch this movie and reflect on the ambitions of these characters and you will see the beauty of this movie.

This movie is the perfect example where a decent plotline featuring good actors can be totally butchered by terrible scripting and bad dialogue. While the premise of a straight forward armoured car robbery and the subsequent battle for the spoils is (in my humble opinion) a solid storyline, the execution of the storyline in this movie is so bad as to be almost unwatchable. This is obviously a made-for-TV movie (the DVD features 4x3 format and stereo sound only, no widescreen or 5.1), but manages to fall short of even that benchmark. The characters are (for the most part) ridiculous, the dialog extremely corny, and the details of the storyline so bad they would appear to have been written by a ten year old. The thing that lured me to hire this piece of rubbish was the R rating - I was expecting some violent and graphic acts of carnage. But even the action sequences in this movie are poor - one notably featuring a bizarre looping of footage after someone is shot. Whether this was an editing glitch or a failed attempt to heighten the dramatic impact of the sequence is open for debate. In short, avoid this film like the proverbial plague. Do yourself a favour, and hire The Salton Sea instead.

This is yet another sharp, stylish genre piece from the talented and always underappreciated Kurt Voss, a skilled director as at home in the world of low-budget exploitation as in that of character-driven art house work. Here Voss uses the limitations of the low-budget genre world as assets, creating a work of energy and distinction marked by the same kind of witty dialogue as his collaborations with Allison Anders or his underrated HORSEPLAYER. Whereas most of the straight-to-video and cable world is a vast wasteland of clunky, empty-headed junk, Voss is continuing in the tradition of people like Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, and Joe Dante, who in the seventies used exploitation films as vehicles for intelligent, personal entertainments. Like all of Kurt Voss's work from BORDER RADIO to SUGAR TOWN, THE HEIST is a great deal of fun and highly recommended.

No one ever said that crimes are fun and entertainment an this movie shows us just that. It keeps it real. Ice T plays a very very bad man and does in in a manner that is believable. The acting may not be beautiful and emotional but it it real. Real crime with a touch of fictional intertwining of characters who are also as real. It isn't about the acting, it's about the personal stories we can imagine, such as the hardened criminal trying to go straight seeking God and ending up using God as an excuse for his inability to stop killing innocents, it is about the derelict brother who always fails because he is unable to realize his ways are wrong and ends up preying on his good hearted sibling. It's about the pretty girl who is also brave and not easily intimidated. And there is more, the intelligent black kid who wastes his talent using it for the wrong reasons and the white wannabe gangsters who end up getting involved with more than they can handle and pay a high price. All these characters may appear boring to some (see other comment) but they really exist, what the film does is involve them in a tragicomic situation that may not be as fascinating as Pulp Fiction but is by far more real, if for no other reason than the actors not being Hollywood Stars.