“High-Rise Hijack High Jinks”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

TOWER HEIST has a story so topical that it could have been ripped from yesterday’s headlines–if a gang of bumbling thieves had schemed to rob Ponzi-meister Bernie Madoff’s penthouse of his stashed millions before he was sent to prison.

Ben Stiller plays Josh Kovacs, the building manager of a residential skyscraper in New York City known as “The Tower,” which is the most expensive real estate in North America.

Living in the penthouse of The Tower is Arthur Shaw, played against type by Alan Alda, who is best known for playing lovable rapscallion Capt. Hawkeye Pierce in the long-running “M*A*S*H” TV series.

Shaw manages money funds for financial investors, but his personality is such that he demands that Josh personally deliver all of Shaw’s meals, because, as he says, “I don’t want the help spitting in my coffee.”

Well, one day to the surprise of everybody except the members in the audience, Shaw gets arrested by the F.B.I. for securities fraud of epic proportions, which is of great importance to Josh, because he had convinced all the employees of The Tower to invest their pension funds with Shaw, and now that money is all gone.

So, when Josh learns from Special Agent Clair Denham, played by Tea Leoni, that $20 million is still missing from Shaw’s accounts, which they suspect was Shaw’s escape fund, Josh concludes that the money must be hidden in a secret safe in Shaw’s penthouse, he enlists the aid of some fellow employees, and they decide to break into the penthouse, find the safe, and steal the money, even though Shaw is under house arrest in the apartment, which is guarded by security cameras and F.B.I. agents outside the door.

Now, Josh IS smart enough to realize that they probably can’t do all this on their own, and so he also enlists the aid of a professional thief that he passes every day on his walk to work who is named Slide, whom he also knew as a kid, and who is played by Eddie Murphy.

Of course, nothing goes quite as planned, and they even have to change their plans when they do manage to get into the apartment, do find the safe, and do get it open.

TOWER HEIST is nothing more nor less than highly entertaining high-rise hijack high jinks.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”