spiff-12
Gangsters that don't take your gun before letting you see the boss? Despite all the shooting and gun pointing...even at the bell hop of a fancy hotel doesn't elicit a phone call to the cops. A six year old that lost his entire family might act a little different than a pint sized Puerto Rican gangster. He wasn't even likable until the last half an hour of the movie...then he was just weird. I don't blame the actor. It was like John Cassavetes didn't even know what he was going to do with the character and just sort of pooched it all the way around. The plot was pretty complicated. Gangsters kill stool pigeon and all his family to make an example. When one 6 year old kid escapes, the girlfriend of a gangster attempts to hide and protect him. Cab. Train. Shoot Gangsters. Hotel. Train. Cab. Shoot Gangsters. Cab. Cab. Train. Meet up with Gangster pal to give him the book of evidence. Escape shooting thugs. Meet up in Pittsburgh where kid gives protagonist the weirdest smile any human being has ever given any other human being. The end.This movie was a train wreck. I couldn't look away.
Paul-271
OK, people, feel free to vote me down for admitting right off that I didn't finish this mess of a film. I couldn't stand it from the get go. The acting isn't acting at even a semi-pro level but instead somewhere between the expertise you'd find halfway between high school and church pageant acting. The music soundtrack isn't. It's some guy making loud squawks on a saxophone which is about as amusing as fingernails on a chalkboard and equally relaxing. The sound recording is about what I'd expect from an 8 year old in 1955 who got his hands on a first generation tape recorder. The film, if one can grace it with such a label, starts out with some muddled malarkey about a 45 year old guy who is apparently married to a 15 year old girl, but somehow this couple has produced several children including a boy of about 6 and a girl of maybe 11. The husband has offended some bad guys by having in his possession something which they want and which he stupidly keeps in his apartment with his family instead of turning it over to the FBI and then seeking shelter from the bad guys. This leads the family to place the 6 year old boy in the hands of a neighbor which she immediately agrees to even though she says she hates all kids and especially this one. So she gets the kid she hates and the item the bad guys seek - a laughable setup. Yeah, this movie is supposed to be full of symbolism of how liberalism killed NY City or some such, but I"m not going for it. It's just a slapdash poorly constructed excuse for cinema barely above Ed Wood in quality. And Ed Wood put more heart into it and left the pretense out. Mandatory viewing for the art house crowd. All others - avoid.
amccallum-1
An important entry in the list of gritty 1970s films (released 1980) that served as a counterpoint to anodyne plastic schlock available in the mainstream.Gloria herself is a metaphor for New Yorkers - complaisant in the crumbling of the city around them, existing in an uneasy complicity with the forces of corruption, and bolting herself into an apartment that vainly attempts to keep the decrepitude of the Bronx at bay.Ms. Rowlands does a workmanlike job. She shines at moments when depicting ferocity in confronting mobsters with a gun in her hand; but at other times, she is less convincing in showing that she is conflicted about continuing to protect the child whom she takes in at its father's behest, moments before he and the rest of the family are liquidated by the mob.Her work would have been easier if the script had been more coherent. At one point the two protagonists take refuge in an apartment, huge and luxe, without any apparent explanation of whose it is or how Gloria has the key. It would help if so much of the dialog were not inaudible. Full marks to Cassavetes for trying for authentic sound, but there are moments when we wish he could have looped a few lines that sound as if they were recorded in the next room by someone coughing through a cushion.Ultimately, the star of this movie is the Bronx itself, shown at the depths of the Dinkins administration. The flaking paint and dingy lighting of decaying hallways and stairwells; potholed streets and shuttered stores. New Yorkers will value this film for the hugely evocative portrayal of the city as she was, when she was on her knees. Thirty years later, recession or not, New York City is a different world.
JoeytheBrit
This film certainly has the gritty look and feel of an urban thriller of the 70s, and it's highlights are the street scenes, many shot from a distance to avoid real New Yorkers staring at the actors or the cameras. Real people walk past the actors completely oblivious to who they are or what's going on and it adds immeasurably to the realism of the film.Sadly, that's about the only positive thing I have to say about this film. I'm frankly surprised that this film comes from a director with as distinguished a reputation as John Cassavetes. Having said that, I'm not too familiar with Cassavetes' work with a director so can't form an opinion on whether that reputation is deserved.Anyway, what's wrong with this film? Firstly, the acting between the two leads is pretty poor. Gena Rowlands was a journeyman actress at best and really doesn't possess the acting skills or presence to carry a film. John Adames as the kid she spirits away from the mob is just plain bad, there's no disguising the fact. He's not helped, either, by the lines he's given to speak as, more often than not, they're words that no kid would speak in such a situation. On top of that, he seems remarkably unmoved by the fact that his entire family has been wiped out.The other main faults for my money are that the musical score is intrusive and overwrought, rising to dramatic crescendos at wholly inappropriate moments, and the plot as a whole really doesn't hang together. And that ending is just horrible and overly sentimental. Cassavetes has failed to arouse any real concern for the characters throughout the preceding two hours, so seeing them reunited in the way he has written just doesn't work at any level other than making it look like the ending of some hokey TV movie
AD
