muerco

I remember seeing this movie when I was about 10 and it seemed like the heighth of sophistication. An idealistic, principled lawyer sees the world falling apart around him and makes his stand. The world's a crummy place, he learns.

Watching it again recently, a lot of things became clear. It's essentially a kitchen-sink potboiler melodrama with some black comedy in it, a puree of everything from Paddy Chayefsky to Frank Capra to Elia Kazan in which a little man rails against the system. The script is much more mediocre than you'd find in those guys' movies (Lumet is the most obvious touchstone here, and would've been the right person to direct), with lots of planted insights and twists that we've seen coming a mile away. It's faux moral in the manner of a 15-year-old who learns that not every defendant is innocent of a crime, and I think Levinson and Curtain really have no idea of what lawyers really do. Everything in the movie is an idealistic Showstopper about the system--no poring over the books or sweating out the details. There are a couple good scenes/characters I guess (Jeffrey Tambor is really entertaining), but the movie really makes little sense. Why the banally comic scene with the helicopter? Why the crummy lounge jazz score? Why does Pacino SUDDENLY YELL in the middle of every other sentence?

I jest about Pacino though. He's great, totally alive, spry, and enervated--the last of his great run through the '70s, and in the service of a generic crap picture. Jewison's direction is pretty lousy, and it seems like the actors (many good actors, I might add) are essentially flying blind. Pacino makes it work for him, though, and if the movie has any weight at all, it's because he's so committed to it. He's still young enough to be completely charismatic (in the manner of "Dog Day Afternoon") yet old enough to carry some authority and wisdom. The movie doesn't really deserve him, but without him there'd be no movie at all, and I'm glad he stooped to be in this to do his thing at its most unfiltered.

I saw this at a festival years ago and it stands as perhaps the paradigmatic Difficult Festival Experience--you suffer because it seems like it might be good for you. I had heard good reports from Cannes and knew that this would probably be my one chance to catch the film, so I went with it with a few friends who were even more in the dark about this than I was, although who were game to see anything that might be potentially good. My own feelings about how confounding and unpleasant the movie may have been were certainly colored in part by my feeling responsible for their enjoyment; I dragged them to this.

Things looked promising in the opening two or three minutes. The b&w photography was gorgeous and sinuous. The cold chill of the Russian winter oozes from the screen. But as soon talk and action began I was instantly, laughably lost. Occasionally my friends and I shot looks of eye-rolling befuddlement to each other; we were being taxed as never before, and unfortunately none of us had a Ph.D. in Russian history or film to serve as an anchor. To say that I had no idea what was going on, where we were or how the characters were related, is an understatement. This movie makes "The Master and Margarita" seem like "The Catcher in the Rye." I can't really make a judgment on the film other than that I felt the other comments here seem too weighted toward people who obviously came to the movie with a lot more history and background than I did. If I had come to the film with that critical apparatus, I probably would have appreciated it much, much more. I don't doubt that those comments are valid, but I did want to put a warning in there that this was a supremely Difficult film even for a fairly adventurous moviegoer. I can't really think of any other film I've ever seen that stumped and mystified me so fully yet so clearly had some structure and apparatus to it. It would probably take 500 pages of text for someone to explain in detail what's happening here, a further investment I wouldn't want to make.

This is the most pure example of American independent film that I've seen in years. Zeroing in on a few characters, a limited situation, perfectly consistent in tone (which might be characterized as realist-deadpan), simply yet effectively done--this is the best Raymond Carver adaptation ever made, yet of course it's not even based on one of his stories (it's based on a fine original screenplay by James Strouse).

It seems like back in the late '80s films like this were made, but very rarely are anymore, when every independent film has become either a star vehicle or a strident, obvious Satire. This film (like Buscemi's also marvelous "Trees Lounge") seems organic to the story it's telling. I came to the film knowing nothing about it, had no idea where it was going or what it was up to, and was always happily surprised that it didn't take the cheap route through anything.

The performances are all excellent. Mary Kay Place perfectly plays the all-American mom and without calling undue attention to himself Affleck absolutely embodies a type we've all met many times before but rarely see on screen with this level of detail. Even Liv Tyler is good. But a special word should be said about Buscemi as a director. There's nothing fancy in how he works yet he seems to know completely how to shape a movie, getting the most out of his actors and the bland settings that the drama plays out in. I wish we had more darkly comic, substantial, humane films like this. I really hope Buscemi gets to make many more films.