Os Oportunistas

Lethargic and rather predictable caper from writer-director Myles Connell. After a distant cousin comes to stay with him, former safecracker Christopher Walken is lured into taking one more assignment. Despite a strong cast and interesting elements, this half-serious heist is finally too familiar to make much of an impact. Walken offers up another intriguing character. His safecracker has not come far in the last decade: he has to rent a fancy car as a ruse; his cousin is a crafty but green accomplice; and the two security guards in on the scheme are schnooks. Mildly enjoyable, and almost worth-seeing for Walken and also for Cyndi Lauper (of all people), very attractive as a no-nonsense bar-proprietress. ** from ****

This is probably the most down-to-earth movie I have ever seen. There´s is absolutely nothing that happened in this movie that couldn´t have happened to you or me. Yet, still the film has a solid and interesting dialog, also very down-to-earth.

It took a while to swallow the feeling I got just after the movie. My first thought was: "Oh no, what a week story and what a boring dialog". But after a while I thought the exact opposite. This movie was definitely better than what I first realized.

6+ out of 10, is my rating.

WEll, i was looking forward to watching this movie, as i am a huge walken fan. After watching this movie, my first reaction to my friend who watched it with me was.. wow that really sucked.. now, .. don't get me wrong, this movie doesn't fail because of the people in the movie, its just the overall style of the movie.. now, I'm a huge fan of bringing the least hollywood into a movie, but this movie is a bit dry.

I felt there was a few strong points to this film, such as not showing silly things as a romance between the daughter and the housemate ( which i'm still uncertain actually who he is ) , and another good job in this film is over-all PLOT... although, again i'll go back again and make note of how the style of this movie, HAS GREAT POTENTIAL, but just fails.

After thinking about this movie more, I would recommend seeing it once, but this is not a movie with high replay value, although who knows.. If walken was not in this movie for sure it would be alot worse..

Christopher Walken and his girlfriend played by Cindi lauper are both New Yorkers so I'm certain they both felt right at home in their roles. Many who like fast action, snappy dialog types of films will be bored with this one. However, for those like me who enjoy a great, well-developed character study carried out in about 88 minutes, this is worth a viewing.

Walken plays a safe-cracker who has served his time and trying to go straight, working as a mechanic, and paying for his old aunt to stay in a home run by nuns. Always on the verge of debt, the sale of his car is saboutaged by someone wanting to get him to do one more job, the safe at the armored car office. So, pressured from all sides, he agrees.

In the safe, his halpess "helper", posing as a cousin from Ireland, gets Walken trapped and caught by the cops. He gets out of it when the business owner, who also runs an illegal laundering operation, fails to press charges. We see walken going back into Lauper's bar, presumably to live straight from then on.

The story thus is sorta victimless. Although Walken and the others are helped by the one money bag that is successfully stolen by the Irish guy, then split up, it was money illegally gotten. We are, I suppose, to forgive Walken because he had no choice. The most interesting scene was where he was practicing "cracking" the 3 different safe combinations within 6 minutes to avoid setting off the alarm.

The DVD is "budget" all the way - Dolby AC-3 sound, no menu, no extras. However, the sound and picture are not deficient, given the formats. Just a well-acted, low-budget film, and I enjoyed it.

Ah, the joys of watching Walken -I could watch him read the phonebook and be captivated (hey he should do that sometime) This film is an excellent one. It has a very nice low-key mood. It takes place in Queens (where I live and breathe) It has a great safe-cracking heist plot as well as enjoyable scenes of Walken practicing his craft. see this movie when you are feeling well i don't know if i should say down but when you feel that you're miserable i guess this is a fine film to watch--not that its depressing but I mean thelow-key approach works perfectly and the score fits in perfectly with the movie. which i for one enjoyed here more and really only noticed during the end-credits and it has actuall characters as opposed to cardboard cutouts that the actors take and make nbeautiful music with. . The real joy in watching this movie is in the performances and in them the way the story unfolds. It is so great to see walken acting in a calm role that is much more of a person then the usuall role he takes the scene-stealing villian (which I must admit I am a huge fan of) but walken is so much more than that as witnessed in great films like this, and(I'm not comparing films here) natrually his oscar wining role in "The Deer Hunter" I"ve seen him on stage in Joyce's "The Dead" and a play which he wrote himself some years ago called "Him" Ah that was a great play seriously best damn play! Ok, so you know I think the world of Walken and that any and every movie could benefit form giving him a bit part in it but I don't mean to take away from the rest of the cast here and this film is excellently acted all around I mean this is truly a character film and this movie simply could not work if they didn't have a good cast First of all- Who knew Cyndi Lauper could act?? I mean I liked the three or four epiosdes she did on "Mad about You" but she wasn't holding her own with walken there. While she's not in that many scenes she's surprisingly good and therefore hope to see her in something else that's good Donal Louge who's everywhere now (thoughts I once had about Walken) continues to build up his resume quite impressively

and of course Peter McDonald as the instigator of the whole film He has a reletively thick irish accent but if you listen carefully its not hard at all to get what he's saying and Jose Zuniga and Vera Farmiga and oh hey Tom Noonan who makes a brief return from career obscurity (or is it oblivion at this stage) to play that wacky supplier of safe-bustin materials His career should be resurrected if only briefly Ok well the characters are great and its the actors who bring the characters to life so they deserved acolades for that but the biggest accolade has to be for writer director O'Connell who made a heist film that's really a character film and how many films can we say that about.I honestly will keep an eyeout for his next film. (I hope that Abel Ferrar is taking notes after The New Rose Hotel although The king of NY is awesome and The Funeral is terrific too but still I'm digressing again) Its low key charm was nothing short of brillant and its running time well who needs running time was without a doubt just right. While not like a fast movie the movie moves pretty swiftly as it reaches its ending without any real lull in the procedings Ok while the movie isnt perfect (i did find myself wishing that walken would just get to deliver a line in signature style which he does very quickly (you know the whole theatric gestural thing that i love)and he does have some good lines that he gets to deliver deadpan while remainning perfectly in character. ("i'm beginning to think there's something wrong with you." is just such an example) )

So in Summary as you can tell I am a huge Christopher Walken fan and even with some of the dreck he's been in--he's always entertaining and this film I can say with the utmost confidence is not dreck and if you're in the right mood-- really enjoyable. So Thank You Mr. O' Connell for writing a good script for the greatest actor in the universe!!!!