Homicide - Mordkommission

While on his way to the case that will make his name, homicide detective Bobby Gold gets sidelined to the scene of a murder of an elderly Jewish woman in a candy shop. Present when the family arrives, Gold is then transferred from his case to this murder – much to the annoyance and sympathy of the rest of his team. At first Gold resents the assignment and doesn't believe any of the paranoid theories about the murder put forward by the family, but digging deeper he finds there may be more to the case than he first thought.

I came to this film because I generally like the work of Mamet and specifically the great pattern and flow of dialogue that he delivers. And yet again, in this regard, I was not disappointed because the film does have a great flow to the script that gives each character energy and presence. I always struggle to describe what it is Mamet does (and have failed here as well) but it works and those that know of it will find more of it here. The problem for me does rather lie in the narrative though. The ending is quite unsatisfying and leaves many questions unanswered. Now, to me, I could accept this if the film was about Gold rather than the two cases in play, and, in a way I think that was the intension. However the script is not strong enough to make the film all about his character – which is a shame because I wanted to understand him more.

Mantegna delivers the character well anyway. He is the heart of the film and his presence and delivery bring out Mamet's script. He is surrounded by a famous support cast, all of whom do equally as well with the dialogue even if they have lesser roles. Macy, Guastaferro, Wallace and others all turn in good support. So mostly a good film and certainly one that will appeal to fans of other work from Mamet. The narrative may leave some viewers feeling a bit disappointed but it still has enough forward motion and energy to engage throughout.

Give me Joe Mantegna and William H. Macy as partners and I'll guarantee that there will be a movie worth watching. Macy has been moving up the chain, and is brilliant here.

The whole issue of Jewish persecution is woven in the story, and Mantegna is conflicted because he is Jewish, but obviously not a practicing one. As things go, his Jewishness is challenged by the investigation. "You say you are a Jew, and you can't read Hebrew. What are you then?" He is finally confronted with the reality of hate and his role as a cop takes second place to his Jewishness.

It is about realizing that he is nowhere until he finds out who he really is. The language of the police is raw and brings everything out into the open. Detective Gold (Mantegna) doesn't find himself at the end of the film. He has a ways to go, but now he has a direction.

I found the film as riveting and disturbing as most of the other reviewers, but I'd like to comment here on David Mamet's writing style. As one of the earlier reviews points out, Mamet is much admired by the literati, and as another says, he is studied in film schools. So I may be going out on a limb, but I am a lot less impressed with his writing than most.

David Mamet started as a playwright, and he still writes with the theater in mind, even when he writes for movies or TV. I first noticed this a year or so ago when watching a rerun of Hill Street Blues for which he'd written the script. The show had many first-rate TV writers, and there was nothing incongruous in the idea that a celebrated playwright would write an episode. But his episode, while intense, involving, and philosophical in the approved Mamet style, proved out of place as an episode in a long-running series with established characters. Mamet's Hill Street bunch lost familiar character traits and gained others common to nearly all the dramatis personae of his plays. The cops all talked like Mamet characters, had macho-philosophical Mamet dialogues, faced Mamet moments of truth.

Well, here is Homicide, another cop show in full length movie form, and once again his puppets talk like Mamet characters, rather than like distinguishable individuals. These roles are his own creations, so he isn't confronted with a series-watcher's expectations, but that hasn't made them more believable as people. His dialogue has a sameness about it that suggests he doesn't really listen to the way people talk. (Again, I realize this is a minority view: critics are always writing about the "gritty realism" of his characters' speeches.)

Listen to the dialogue from one of the NYPD Blue episodes written by David Milch. (I choose Milch not only because he's one of Blue's best writers [and co-producer, of course] but also because he wrote many of the best Hill Street Blues episodes around the time Mamet wrote his contribution.) The characters are varied, and their choice of words tells the listener more about them as individuals with every line they speak. Mamet characters tend to tell you, not what they are like as people, but what Mamet wants you to think about them. Again and again during Homicide I found myself thinking: "no, he wouldn't say that", or even "does anybody really talk that way?"

Am I saying David Milch is a better writer than David Mamet? I think I am, for realistic media like TV and film, anyway. The theater, as an inherently artifical medium, can absorb and even thrive upon artificiality in its dialogue. But TV and movies have different demands, and I don't think David Mamet meets them very well.

A big-city police detective, Joe Mantegna, who always ignored and downplayed his Jewish heritage, finds himself forced to examine his values after being pulled off what he considers an important case, at the request of influential Jewish citizens, to investigate the death of an old Jewish storekeeper, who might have been the victim of anti-Semitic violence. This film isn't without its flaws, but writer/director David Mamet deserves a great deal of credit for having the courage to present a number of provocative questions about what it means to be a Jew in an often hostile society. The film can also be applauded for not offering any simple answers. Usually in Hollywood movies, characters are rewarded for returning to their roots. In "Homicide," the reverse is true as Mantegna soon finds his life spiraling out of his control. The drama is always compelling, if somewhat heavy-handed and implausible at times. More importantly, the Mametisms which increasing mar his work, i.e., scripts where every character speaks in exactly the same voice, and big roles for non-talented wives, are kept in check here. This is my favorite Mamet film.

While this picture could compare favorably with many of its type for nothing more than its use of action, suspense and realistic details regarding police work, it goes significantly further and becomes a character study of a man searching for an identity. A conscientious, no-nonsense detective, Gold has never become involved in his work to the extent that it has made him question his values, let alone his reason for existing. Without the point being forced upon us, we see a character with (seemingly) no home, no friends, no social activities: a decent man who has not connected with anything meaningful in life until circumstances force him to make significant choices.

Especially challenging to the viewer is the deliberately ambiguous ending in which there is reason to believe that Gold could choose either of the major alternatives available to him. He looks and feels like an outsider in the precinct. He now identifies with the Jew as an outsider. Could it be that he is actually considering.....?

See this provocative picture, and decide for yourself. Excellent performances and direction throughout.