Watch The Maiden Heist For Free

Best movie of this year hands down!

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

You would think with all these stars this would be a great movie. It wasn't. The film moved very slow. The main characters outside of Macy were dull. The idea was clever, but the dialogue was not what I would expect from a real comedy. I didn't have any laugh out loud moments for this "madcap comedy." Three security guards are each in love with one particular piece of art. The museum is going to move the pieces so they decide to make fakes and substitute them for the real pieces. What was supposed to be "madcap" I assume, were the errors they made in swapping the paintings. It too was slow. Freeman and Walker should not be doing this type of "comedy" as they plainly don't have a feel for it.

Don't expect an Oscar....but fun flick all around!!! Love William H. Macy as always.Morgan Freeman is great and CW....actually shows a sensitive side.....Fun Movie!!!!I would watch again.

Roger Barlow (Christopher Walken) day dreams as security guard in a museum. His big joy is to spend the day in front of the painting 'The Lonely Maiden'. Then he finds out that the new curator is selling many of the works including his Maiden. Other security guards Charles Peterson (Morgan Freeman) and George McLendon (William H. Macy) are in the same boat, and they come up with a scheme to steal their art pieces.This is a marginal comedy. The three guys are great actors, but there aren't that many funny jokes. There's a couple of cute moments. And Macy gets naked. That was weird. It just needs an energetic improvisational comedian in the mix, and a funnier script.

I was fairly delighted with The Maiden Heist. I picked it up hoping to see some amusing performances from a crew of appealing, veteran performers and that's what I got. There was a lot more of William H. Macy's bare butt than I expected, and I never quite figured out why the film didn't at least put some gray in Marcia Gay Harden's hair to try and compensate for the noticeable difference in ages between she and Christopher Walken as they played husband and wife. Harden seems to be playing the same age but looks at least 20 years younger than Walken, whose eyes are still bright but whose everything else has dimmed. But it takes more than middle-aged man ass to put me off a good comedy and the Harden/Walken contrast was more quizzical than annoying.Roger Barlow (Christopher Walken) is a museum security guard with a passion for French art and a particular obsession with one painting, The Lonely Maiden. When he finds out all the exhibits, including his beloved, are being shipped to Denmark to make way for some gaudy modern art, Roger recruits kindred spirits (Morgan Freeman and William H. Macy) who are similarly consumed by two other works of art in a scheme to steal their objects of desire and substitute copies for the trip to a Copenhagen museum. But Roger's very New Jersey-ish wife (Marcia Gay Harden) and a big slip up during the heist may land them all in very hot water.Now, The Maiden Heist is one of these comedies that's doesn't have a lot of actual jokes. There are some, including an inspired visual gag involving Walken repelling down the side of a building and others revolving around Macy's nudity, but this is a story that gets by on personality and tries to be more endearing than hilarious. So, if you're down in the dumps and need something energetic and aggressively funny to pull you out of it, this may not be the film for you. But if you're already in a relatively good mood and looking for a relaxing and somewhat enchanting way to spend 90 minutes, give this movie a go.Walken, Freeman and Macy are all wonderful and though Harden is playing more of a caricature, she does it quite well. The script does a great job of illustrating each man's preoccupation with their particular work of art in a different way and the plan to steal them is rather beautifully put together. There's also just enough clever visual imagery to keep your interest piqued without overwhelming the plot and the characters.It's a shame that many people don't and never will know about this little gem, but that's the paradox of entertainment we live with. Technology has given us access to more films than ever before. Unfortunately, that avalanche of choice combines with technology that allows the production of more god awful crap than ever before to bury movies like The Maiden Heist before the audience has a chance to know them. Changing economics and business models has made it even more difficult for films to get into theaters and stay there long enough to be discovered. Then they come out on DVD or get streamed online and have one week at best before another batch of new releases supplants them. Far too soon, they're shunted to a back shelf in the video store or relegated to one more name on a web page's ever lengthening list of films you can "order now!"Oh, well. I guess it has to be enough that The Maiden Heist and other movies like it are available for whomever is lucky to stumble across them. I'm glad I was one of them.