La loi de la gravité

One of the things that bugs me about indie film-making is that the wrong people make it to step two. Nick Gomez surely should have been able to do more work than "Illtown" and "New Jersey Drive" after finishing this well-crafted, if choppy, urban tale. I liked "New Jersey Drive" a lot, so I guess Nick's getting his recognition through "The Sopranos" at the moment. And why is Mr. Green still only playing psychos and tiny little bit parts, apart from his brilliant work in "Clean Shaven"? At least Adam Trese went on to "Palookaville"!

Ok, so that's more of a rant than a review, and I'll cut to the chase:

If you liked "Bottle Rocket", "Palookaville", or "A Bronx Tale", see this film.

It's an old story, but I'll tell it again:

Guys from bad neighborhoods, against whom the deck is pretty well stacked, get some better-than-usual goods to sell. And sell them they must, under less than ideal circumstances, leading to all sorts of fun and frolic, in a very non-comedic sense. Greene, Trese, Falco, and Schulze stand out. Saul Stein is quite creepy as the face of the "new mob".

This sort of film appeals to me more in its American genre than the current British versions of this story ("London Kills Me", "Lock, Stock", "Twin Town", and "Trainspotting") as the Scots/Welsh/Home Counties vision of petty crime has a heavily injected fantasy slant absent in four American flix cited in my discussion.

Also, these petty-street-crime films are probably (with the exception of John Sayles) one of the few windows into American poverty available in US film right now. The scene in "Laws of Gravity" between minor criminal Frankie and Greene's screen spouse Denise (Edie Falco) on the nature of life and work is brilliant.

lordwhorfin says, go ye forth and rent.

The first time I saw this movie was about six years ago on either Showtime or Cinemax can't remember which. I was blown away I missed the first few minutes and thought at first that I was watching a documentary. The hyper camera work, the dialog, the more than real life acting, and very believable situations. No Hollywood style glizt and glamour here. No big name actors, no multi-Jillion dollar budgets. Just basic film making in it's rarest form; raw, unrefined in other words REAL. Real characters, no complicated plots no surprise endings no Hollywood endings no explosions no car chases and crashes. This film is a real character study and you know how it's going to end, the only way it can. (Hey Independent Film Channel why haven't you put this one air yet)?

I've heard this compared to Scorsese's "Mean Streets", but the crime and situations depicted are much more low-key than that film. This is really unique. A couple of incredibly minor Brooklyn thieves, one's wife, the other's girlfriend, and their local bottom-feeder milieu, futzing around interacting with the locals and just squeaking by. That's about the whole film, give or take a subplot about a stash of guns that our 'heroes' come into and try to sell. But it's not about plot so much, it's a character study, and the performances are incredible, so the characters stick. The two leads are both great, although Adam Trese has the gift of a part as the young psychotic/Jerry Lewis type. Edie Falco (Tony Soprano's wife in "The Sopranos") has an unusually great role as written, in the sense that they don't write too many parts as varied and interesting as this for women to play, particularly in crime-related movies. But what she does with it is pretty astonishing. It's a great performance. That director has one unusual eye for picturesque composition of unlikely subject material too. "Laws of Gravity" is an uncommonly good movie. Its dialogue-ear for humour in banal minutiae has a smell of the Tarantinos, but this pre-dated "Reservoir Dogs".

If you like "Laws of Gravity" you will definitely like "A year in the life of crime (1989)" from HBO. It followed a group of real losers around Jersey City for a year. A must see One of the best documentaries I've ever seen.

I would love to see a follow up to the original HBO version of this movie. It's been about 16 years and I would love to see if any of the original guys from the documentary are alive.

HBO needs to re-release "A year in the life of crime" or do the follow up. I'm sure this has been mentioned a million times in relation to this film so I will end my post here...

Brett

With so many movies copy-catting winning formulas,it is a shame, but no surprise, that "Laws of Gravity" is a little-seen, hardly ever-recalled movie. It got lost in the Chasing Amy/She's the One/Do the Right Thing indie over-load. And I'm not knocking those movies. But please give due credit to the "godfather" of indies,which combined a gutsy and raw, yet still highly intelligent script with near-flawless acting and, at that time, never-before-seen editing and cinematography. Can you tell I'm a fan? I too, like many other viewers, "stumbled" upon this movie while channel-surfing late at night. This will not be a review, being that I don't want to give away any key moments of the film. Rather, this is a plea to all movie lovers to beg, threaten, and/or intimidate the powers-that-be to release this film on video and DVD for, to my extreme shock, this film is nowhere to be found. (Save for the afore-mentioned "stumble".) And if you find it there, TAPE IT! This is definitely one for the personal library!