SPOILERS DOWN THE PATH; THE DISCUSSION BELOW WILL NOT BE COMPREHENSIVE WITHOUT IT.
TREAD CAREFULLY. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
THIS MOTION PICTURE IS OFFICIALLY AN AFFILIATE OF THE FILMMAKING PARAGONS.
The Score is a rather simple yet magnificent heist film that nobody talks about enough. The script is air-tight and the filmmaking is classic. You know what these two gives birth to? A masterpiece! Or at least, a rather close one in this case.
Nick (Robert De Niro) is a master safe cracker. He is a high-end professional, and you are visually shown how meticulous he is in covering his tracks in the beginning. But he's done this for a while and he's done enough. Just when he's looking to retire, a golden opportunity like never before arrives. After a steady and convincing progression of events, eventually he agrees and we embark on an extremely riveting heist ride!
When we say extremely riveting, we mean delicious tensions and thrills! Just when you think everything's going smooth, a curveball is thrown at you, making you wonder how the main characters will overcome it. The constant alternation between positive and negative nodes of event changes is beyond well done! 50G to buy the engineering codes and the park meetup for that involving guns, a bigger loan shark scouting this project, additional cameras installed to face the heist point that the planning includes timing it on and off as Nick passes them by, older janitor pursuing Brian's (Edward Norton) absence and time delay to clean an additional section of a floor room are examples. Even the exposition about how the goal is to get the specter planted within a piano's leg, navigation through the city tunnel via instructions above ground or a regular scope camera view is enticing!
Adding on to the constant tug between Nick and Jack (Edward Norton) that results in a climax no one saw coming is absolutely brilliant! Jack's deliberate delay as Nick's stuck to the beam and his sabotage on Nick by stealing the scepter away to later realizing not only does he get the wrong one but now is on a nationwide hunt are cent-per-cent blockbuster offerings! The intense finale chase, ‘thug-a-rent’ beat-up and the way the film ends just like it started are simply marvelous!
Even though this isn't a performance-oriented drama or anything, to see Marlon Brando sharing frames with Robert De Niro is anybody's wish, if you ever need another reason to catch this movie! The Godfathers of acting! The way they converse with each other as Marlon Brando delivers his impromptu act is really enjoyable to watch! And then you have Edward Norton, another terrific actor pulling off the handicapped janitor alias Brian. You even have a scene where these three exist in one argument, so talk about money's worth!
Frank Oz's direction is experienced, in the sense that you'll never notice his existence. The motion picture flows in flush without any particular area protruding. Even revelation surrounding Nick's plan as Jack reads it is shown to us without letting us know anything about it at first is genius storytelling! Howard Shore's score is mellow, subtle yet epic! Blocking and staging are simple. Even the equipment they show Nick uses for every heist are not complicated thus easy to understand. You dovetail all these with a lagproof, polished script, it becomes any filmmaker's dream to have a gem as such in their filmography!