Night at the Golden Eagle

That is how I felt after watching this spectacle of humanity. Completely down. Like I was damaged and left for refuse on the side of the curb. Rifkin did a wonderful job of giving us a side of humanity that we usually see but not at its gritty and gnarly best. This film is right up there with Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream" only it feels slightly more polished. The locale for one lent a perfectly hopeless air to the mise en scene. Rifkin played with the color saturation in such a way that it also added an extra layer of desperation to the visuals. Perfection, and this movie is right up there with other modern despair epics like Atlantic City and Requiem for a Dream.

"Night at the Golden Eagle" is the kind of work that grabs your package and squeezes for 90 minutes. It's like careening around your own subconscious during night terrors. The film smacks of the depths of loneliness, despair and the threads of pure survival, filtered through a sublimely artistic prism of the characters' self-delusional hopes and desperate dreams. The direction is crisp, the cinematography excruciatingly magnificent, the acting expertly banal, and the characters out of some finely honed noir nightmare. A cheap indie full of unknown players exquisitely cast, with the awesome kick of an "L.A. Confidential" or "Seven". I couldn't look away, as much as I wanted to. A coarse gem for anyone who believes that movies can actually be art. Watch it very late at night, and then take an Ambien...otherwise you won't sleep.

The story of small time crooks, low-income senior citizens and others on the fringe, Night at the Golden Eagle shows one night in their sorry lives. From the ex-con just getting out of prison to the loser desk clerk, everyone in the hotel has some large or small drama going on.

While other reviewers chose to see this as gritty and realistic, I didn't think so; street walkers, for example, are seldom as good looking as Natasha Lyonne, or as articulate. You could expect a lot more drug use and a lot fewer pretty faces in a flea bag hotel, the characters living there wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

The movie is shot in dark tones with a distinct style, presumably to give it more atmosphere; that works, it doesn't distract from the action. The production values are as high as anything else, this isn't a B movie at all.

The film misses the mark, though, it's a decent movie but not a real slice of life as it aims to be. With a couple of quick edits it could easily be the movie of the week on TV.

"Night at the Golden Eagle" is just a few steps away from being a perfect film, we don't get the opportunity to absorb the climax before it ends, so by the time the credits roll it felt incomplete.

The story isn't about resolutions, but instead the opposite, if you ever wondered where the people who don't "make it" go after they've failed, or where society's unwanted leftovers collect, or where those with potential ultimately find themselves on the wrong side of fate's door there are a lot of them out there right now on the streets, and they're getting younger and younger, get your teen to see it they might learn something.

NIGHT AT THE GOLDEN EAGLE (2002) ***1/2 Donnie Montemarano, Vinny Argiro Natasha Lyonne Ann Magnuson, Vinnie Jones, Sam Moore, Fayard Nicholas, Miles Dougal, Badja Djola, James Caan (Cameo) . Character driven piece of pulp fiction with career criminal Montermarano recently released from a stint in the joint and hooking up with his old cronie Argiro whose plans on going straight including his newly returned to society buddy to a jaunt to Las Vegas ends up with some cruel twists of fate on a sweltering night in the titular Los Angeles flophouse. With the feel of a novella come to life the ensemble cast of misfits, losers and degenerates set in this moldy enclave of despair permeates like a rotting carcass thanks largely to filmmaker Adam Rifkin's vision of hell on Earth (kudos to the ace cinematography by Checco Verese for his seamy look at the underbelly of humanity at its worst). Grim, uncompromising and deftly cutting to the bone of contrition.