Mac

Mac is a movie to prize if you are of Italian-American heritage, grew up or live near Italians, or want to look beyond the mobster cliché that surrounds them. It portrays Italians far more realistically than "The Godfather" -- a classic, but only concerned with a tiny fraction of Italian-American life -- as superior and extraordinarily hard- working artists, craftsmen, builders and family men, naive with money, awkward at sex, unprejudiced, and bewildered by women. It is funny, wistfully sad, compelling, sweet and powerfully LOUD. It is a treat of a movie, one of a string of small independent films to emerge out of the so-called "video auteur" age of the early 1990s. Its director and star, John Turturro, based the movie largely upon is dad and his own early years, and the film rings true with that kind of authenticity.

John Turturro and his brothers go into business building houses. Turturro wants to build them properly, and drives his family nuts while he builds his first development rigt next to a dairy farm, which makes it seem impossible to sell the beautiful homes he builds.

It's a beautiful character study, based on a play that Turturro and Brandon Cole wrote while they were students; the role is said to have been modeled on Turturrro's father, who seems to have been a man who took pride in doing things right. Turturro accurately portrays him, passionate, hard-working, and occasionally ridiculous and even destructive. It's agreat performance with a fine cast.

I think there's a tendency for actors who decide to direct their own movies to leave absolutely everything up to their colleagues, the actors, including driving the story. I couldn't tell if this film was scripted or improvised, but there's an awful lot of long, no-dialogue shots of faces and activity that don't advance the plot, what there is of it. A surprising amount of what dialogue there is, is in untranslated Italian-which didn't bother me, except for the fact that-again-it didn't advance the story much. After about half an hour of establishing 4 or 5 characters without much action or tension, I still couldn't tell where the film was going. It seems to be about holding one's work to high standards, but then what? No dramatic tension, no imbalance to resolve, no conflicts to keep track of. Two stars for good acting and competent staging; two stars for lousy script, absent directing, and nonexistent editing. I can't be accused of spoiling anything if I merely point out that this film left me plenty of time between dialogue and story elements to ask myself about the plot, the story, the acting, the characters...it didn't draw me in at all.

A labor of love from John Turturro about his father, a construction worker who starts his own business with his brothers, going from rebellious worker to tyrannical owner in the process. I loved how organic this felt early on, flowing along like life, but then that freedom became a bit overdone and the subplots were left undeveloped and dangling. There were also too many scenes that broke into loud shouting and/or fighting, something that began to diminish the impact of each as the film wore on. The pride of work well done and struggle to succeed certainly come through, and the cast worked together very well in this. The real-life telephone message from Turturro's father played at the end really hit home too.

Enjoyed this entire film, having grown up in Queens, N.Y.it brought back great memories of how hard it was for the Italian people to work at their skills as builders. John Turturro, and Nicholas Turturro gave excellent performances and Ellen Barkin had a small supporting role as a writer who charmed the Italian young men. This was a down to earth picture of Italian people and their family life to struggle in the building industry in Queens, N.Y. This is definitely a film classic.