Minis are cool and they can go anywhere if driven with great skill. This is the moral of The Italian Job. An hour of random, illogical filler (admittedly with the odd spectacular car wreck) precedes the famous 20 minutes of watching minis do cool stuff and the final 10 minutes is only there to pad the movie to feature length, but the good 20 minutes is a must see!<br /><br />Where does it go wrong? Characters (at least a dozen of them) are introduced from nowhere, appear for 5 minutes and disappear only to be seen at the end cheering or shaking their fists depending on whether they were good or bad. A lot of these characters seem to have jokes reliant on us knowing their personalities, but we don't! How do you get to know a character that's only got 3 lines (albeit stereotypical lines)? It's a case of quantity over quality. Tragic as most of the actors are fine in the quality department, but don't get a chance to demonstrate it. Even Benny Hill only has about 3 minutes screen time! A fin example of how to turn a great ensemble into a great jumble.<br /><br />The first hour consists of random 5 minute bits that make sense within themselves, but don't have anything to do with one another nor do they logically flow. They do go in a general direction, but so much is touched upon , but never explored.<br /><br />Not wanting to give too much away, I'll simply say that the ending is crap. It's a good idea for an ending, but is executed as though it were in front of a blind firing squad.<br /><br />The cinematography is great, particularly for a 60s movie. When a film looks good today, you know it looked great then. The car wrecks look fantastic - proof that you don't need CGI for great action bits, provided you have the money to burn. Too bad what the were shooting was, for the most part, awful.<br /><br />The best recommendation I could give: Skip the first hour, watch the minis do their stuff, then turn it off.