Liberty Heights

I found "Liberty Heights" an immensely entertaining movie which shows great talent, especially actor-wise. The movie is a great portrayal of how things looked like in America in the 50's, showing religious, racial, social and other differences and also showing how these differences can easily be overcome once a person realizes(or as was the case in this movie-doesn't even consider) that different only and always means worse. Ben Foster steals the show from the first scene and Adrien Brody is in close second place. And because they had such screen persona, or power if you will, I found if distracting and a bit out of place when at the end the story shifted too much to Joe Mantegna, their movie father. I have much respect for the man, he's an immense and always fun-to-watch actor, but in this movie it was him that was overshadowed, which is ironic since HE was the one who usually did this. A great, lightheaded growing-up movie that begins and ends with a nostalgic note, once again making me wish I'd have a chance to live in that day and age. Much praise to Barry Levinson for composing "Liberty Heights". 8/10

LIBERTY HEIGHTS (LH) is a fine addition to writer/director Barry Levinson's series of nostalgic autobiographical Baltimore-set films. This episodic but heartfelt comedy-drama, set in the mid-1950s, stars Adrien Brody and Ben Foster as brothers Van and Ben Kurtzman, who come of age while grappling with anti-Semitism, their loving dad's (Joe Mantegna) shady business dealings (he runs both a burlesque house and a low-profile numbers racket. My late dad, a bookie, would've loved this guy! :-), racism (Ben and his pretty black classmate Sylvia, appealingly played by Rebekah Johnson, start seeing each other on the sly), and classism (Van falls hard for blonde WASP dream girl Dubbie, who turns out to be a nightmare -- a tragic figure, in fact -- but is capably played by supermodel Carolyn Murphy in her first and, to date, only film role that I know of). While LH isn't quite as sharp and knowing as Levinson's modern classic DINER (with which LH would make an interesting double feature; the DVD includes the DINER trailer, by the way), it's rendered with great affection and attention to detail about the characters, their world, and the changing times they're living in. For me, the wittier moments really made the film -- Ben's anarchic streak livens things up, to say the least! Best Ben moments: 1) his scandalizing his family by dressing as Hitler on Halloween; 2) the act of defiance he and his friends eventually pull at the "NO JEWS..." pool; and 3) the tender yet chaste kiss he gives Sylvia at graduation, freaking out both sets of parents. LH is worth a rental, at the very least!

I saw all 4 of the so-called "Baltimore Quadrilogy" in sequence, and, while the first three were fantastic, Diner still rose to the top for me. It was the most real, most heartfelt, and most memorable. I put on LH thinking it would be "okay", and was shocked to see it just about right up there with Diner for all the same reasons. If you've seen Scorsese's "The Bronx Tale" with DeNiro, you might notice a resemblance, down to the "forbidden" teen interracial love plot. In Bronx Tale, the "mob" has a part, but with nothing terribly eventful. In both, the family and everyday storyline take precedence, as if the mob aspects were afterthoughts.

I can't say that the Jewish Mob background did LH justice, as Montagna just seemed too wishy-washy to be a front-line mobster. Montagna is a great actor, but I think he should have brought a little harder edge to the mob-orientated moments. He did fine as a father, though he could have had any occupation and the movie would not have been any the less for it. I strongly feel that if the movie did not have the mob element in it, and Montagna had a conventional occupation, the movie would have been perfect, and even more realistic than it was. The burlesque scenes again were a drag on what otherwise would have been a perfect "coming of age" film.

This movie comes very close to "Diner" quality, if not for the somewhat flawed "mob" subplots....well worth seeing though!

From time to time one comes across remarkable films like Liberty Heights where simple story is told in extraordinary manner. This film is about the Jewish Kurtzman family, but we follow the father and his two sons as three separate stories. Each one of them having their own struggle and challenges to face. What struck me as the most amazing part of the story was the easiness of it, how it flowed and gently tackled serious issues in the community of that time. It portrait itself in a realistic manner, where there were no real baddies or large showdown, just people going through life. The performance of the actors was brilliant, with Joe Mantegna (the father), showing once more what a talent he is. This film won't leave anyone untouched. 8/10

This movie is sort of like the concept of the TV show Seinfeld-- it's about nothing. By this I don't mean that it lacks substance, in fact, it has plenty, but I mean rather that it does not involve an intense plot line. It's more like a series of snapshots taken out of one family's album, like a brief recording of one year in their lives. It's as if these people were real, simply going about their lives in their times, and we got to peek in on them, and it is acted in just that way. I think it's very true to director Barry Levinson's vision, a vision that is clear upon viewing his other films that he includes with Liberty Heights as his "Baltimore" films. These include Diner, Avalon, and Tin Men. Because this is not the typical problem arises-conflict ensues-climax is reached-conclusion is found film, Levinson shows us that these people's lives were a series of ups and downs, joys and losses, that summarize American middle-class youth in all ages in history. There connections between the different walks of life and the idea of growing up and discovering diversity around you is what makes this film universal and beautiful, all without handing you morals and themes on a silver platter. This film takes a wonderfully objective viewpoint that allows you to make meaning of it rather than spelling it out for you.