The Maiden Heist

The modest comedy The Maiden Heist is being released straight to DVD, despite three Academy Award winners (Christopher Walken, Morgan Freeman, Marcia Gay Harden) in the cast. All of the actors are game in a let’s-get-the-band-back-together sort of way, but the movie coasts on their collective charm, as director Peter Hewitt (Garfield) effectively squanders a neat idea. Walken does his usual processed shtick as a reserved museum worker who spends his days mooning over a portrait called “The Lonely Maiden.” When the museum’s new curator sells off the collection to Denmark, Walken teams up with a couple of other art-obsessed oddballs (Freeman and William H. Macy) to pilfer the paintings and replace them with fakes. The Maiden Heist does for the heist picture what Robert Benton’s Twilight did for the detective movie: nothing whatsoever.