The Score (2001 film)

After nearly being caught on a routine burglary, master safe-cracker Nick Wells decides the time has finally come to retire from his criminal activities. He shared this idea with his girlfriend Diane, and offers to live together away of his criminal ways. Diane will think about it.

He is enticed into taking one final score by his fence Max. The job, worth a $4 million payoff to Nick, is to steal a sceptre, a French national treasure stored in the ultra-secure basement of the Montréal Customs House. The sceptre was discovered by Customs agents being smuggled into Canada. Max introduces Nick to Jack Teller, an ambitious thief who has infiltrated the Customs House and gained information regarding security by acting as a mentally-challenged janitor.

The plot includes the initial distrust from Nick towards Jack, and their settlement in order to do the job. After they make a truce between them, and agreeing with Max that Nick is in charge of the operation, they start to work together building a plan, and finding the access to the Customs House basement.

Also the plot includes Nick's girlfriend Diane disappointment, over Nick motives to do this last score (Have enough money to get full ownership of his Jazz Club, and to have a comfortable life with Diane), after she happily agrees to start a new life with him. She leaves Nick disappointed and reconsidering their sentimental relationship.

Another complication arise as Jack is not able to get the codes for the Security System of the Customs House. Nick then looks for help in a trusted associate, Steven, who is a computer hacker and has worked with Nick in other jobs in the past. Steven hacks into the Custom House's security system to obtain the bypass codes, allowing them to temporarily manipulate the alert protocols of the system during the heist. Steven is caught, however, by a corrupt systems administrator of the Security company (Ironclad) who extorts Nick for $50,000 in order to give them the information.

The exchange of the money and the codes was made at a public park, at the corrupt administrator request, and a tension moment involving guns arise, while Jack, Nick and Steven confirms the codes in real time, using a radio and a cell phone to communicate between them. After this event, Nicks firmly orders Jack not to carry a gun ever, even if that helped to control the situation at the park.

One more complication appears as Nick discovers the safe can not be opened, using the tools and procedures he masters, so he needs to find a way to open it using a short period of time, according with the schedule planned for the night of the heist.

After seeing an accident in the street, involving a beer keg being opened by the pressure of the liquid inside, Nicks figures a way to open the safe. The day after this, at his secret workshop, Nicks explains how he will open the safe to Jack. In this scene Nick tells Jack that after the score, Jack must remain in his regular work shifts so no suspicions could arise about who planned the job, and that Jack must wait for his part of the money, after Nick and Max finish the transaction with final buyer. At first Jack do not agree on this, and wants to be present in the rest of the transaction with Max, but Nick pushes his decision, and Jack reluctantly agrees on follow Nick's orders.

More complications arise when they are forced to move up their timetable after the Customs House becomes aware of the sceptre's value and adds extra closed-circuit television cameras and infrared detectors to monitor the basement room while preparing to return it to its rightful owners.

A few days before the score, Nick and Jack have a conversation in Nick's Jazz Club, where Nick advises Jack to make a list of goals and take life slow and smartly, in order to achieve them. After this, Nicks finishes the conversation abruptly, and goes to meet Diane, who is visiting him at the Jazz Club, while Jack observes at a distance the encounter.

At this point, Nicks feels the job is too risky after all these complications, and wants to pull off, but Max implores him to do it, in order to pay a mafia boss the 4 millions Max owes to him. After this conversation, Nick reluctantly agrees to continue, and finishes the plan with Jack at a restaurant.

The night of the score, Nick uses a sewer tunnel to enter the Customs House basement as Jack rigs the cameras to shut off when Nick enters the storage room. A fellow janitor stumbles upon Jack, who locks the janitor in a closet. Nick fills the enormous in-floor safe containing the sceptre with water before inserting and detonating a depth charge to blow off the door. He quickly packs up the sceptre in a carrying case to depart, but Jack double crosses him and at gunpoint demands he hand it over. Nick reluctantly gives up the carrying case and seconds later the alarm, rigged by Jack, alerts the entire security staff to the heist. Nick darts for the sewer entrance he came in through as Jack heads back upstairs, tucking the carrying case inside his janitor jumpsuit and slipping past the incoming police units responding to the burglary. Nick escapes the security guards chasing him through the sewer tunnels.

After making it to a bus station to flee the city, Jack calls Nick to gloat, and says Nick shouldn't have tried to keep him out of the rest of the job, but is shocked to discover that Nick has anticipated Jack's actions. Jack opens the carrying case Nick gave him, and finds it contains the steel rod weighed down with various bushings, they used in the planning of the job. Brushing off Jack's threats of vengeance, Nick advises Jack to flee as "every cop in the city" will now be looking for him. Nick hangs up and boards a boat with the real sceptre as a shocked Jack broods over his situation. Later, Max smiles as he watches a news broadcast reporting a massive manhunt being organized to find Jack, the prime suspect, and an unidentified accomplice. Nick then meets his girlfriend Diane at the airport as she returns from work, and they embrace.

• Robert De Niro as Nick Wells
• Edward Norton as Jack Teller
• Marlon Brando as Max
• Angela Bassett as Diane
• Gary Farmer as Burt
• Jamie Harrold as Steven
• Paul Soles as Danny

During the production, Brando repeatedly argued with Oz and called him "Miss Piggy", the Muppet whom Oz played from 1976 to 2001.[2][3] Brando's eccentric behavior on set included performing scenes in his underwear and altogether refusing to be directed by Oz at times, having co-star DeNiro take over with Oz instructing via an assistant director, an allegation that Oz denied flatly.[4][5] "There was one scene–two days of shooting–when Marlon was too upset with me to act while I was on the set," Oz stated. "I watched from outside, with a monitor, and Bob was very good and acted as mediator between us."[6]

The late screenwriter Scott Marshall Smith joined the crew late and got a writing credit. [7]

Oz downplayed the conflict after the film's release, taking unspoken note of the reported tension on the movie's Montreal set:

He's a very sweet, gracious -- childlike in some ways -- very, very humane, very complex person. But I can't say that we got along all the time. And it wasn't because he was difficult; it was a difficult situation. I don't want to do a puffery piece here, I want to be flat-out true: We had a difference in creative interpretation of the role. He felt one way, quite sincerely and earnestly, and I felt the other, and the producers backed me, which I'm grateful for, and Marlon did come around to my side.[8][9]

Oz later blamed himself for the tension and cited his tendency to be confrontational rather than nurturing in response to Brando's acting style.[10]

The film was released on VHS and DVD on December 11, 2001.[11]

• The Score at IMDb
• The Score at Box Office Mojo
• The Score at Rotten Tomatoes