Rapsodia per un killer

'Fingers' is the kind of movie that makes me value the 1970s over any other decade. A complex portrait of Jimmy Fingers, an ex-debt collector turned wanna be concert pianist (Harvey Keitel, in one of his top five performances), who finds himself drawn back into his old line of work as a favour to his aging gangster father (Michael V. Gazzo, 'The Godfather 2', 'Fear City'). Fingers isn't the most likable character, is obsessed by sex and music, both doo wop (which he plays at top volume on a boom box) and classical, and is obviously doomed to fail.

Keitel is absolutely mesmerizing on screen, and the movie is filled with a supporting cast of interesting faces, including Jim Brown ('Slaughter'), Tisa Farrow (Fulci's 'Zombie Flesh Eaters'!), Danny Aiello ('Do The Right Thing', 'Jacob's Ladder'), future "Angel" Tanya Roberts, and at least two Sopranos. I don't know why 'Fingers' isn't mentioned as much as the more celebrated 1970s crime movies of Scorsese and Coppola. Godard and Tarantino are both fans of this movie, and you will be too if you give it a look. Great stuff!

Troubled pianist Jimmy Fingers (Harvey Keitel) pursues artist Carol (Tisa Farrow) with his radio but she is with Dreems (Jim Brown). He gets his musical skills and madness from his institutionalized mother. He's also a ruthless debt collector for his aging mobster father Ben (Michael V. Gazzo). He's the only one left working for him. His father has a large debt to collect but the arrogant gangster is refusing to pay the over-the-hill Ben.

This is Keitel's Taxi Driver. It is lesser known and not as great. The commonality is the lead. Keitel is masterful. He has so much internal fire. He is a man ready to explode at any moment. Now, times have caught up with filmmaker James Toback recently. He's had a career of extraordinary highs and ugly lows. It doesn't get much lower than he is today. That is beside the point. For this movie, there is greatness and his name is Harvey Keitel.

Obscuro-a-go-go seventies flick. Seems to be a self portrait of the director himself, how he sees himself. And by all accounts (including his own) it's an accurate portrait. He sees himself as an artist and artists are also gangsters outside the petty mores of straight society. He is vain and selfish and of course women dig him like crazy and get off on being abused. A women in a toilet immediately has sex with his majesty although they've never met. He is just too irresistible. Said girl went on to star in 'Charlie's Angels'. A better class of toilet then. In a final bit of vanity, the artist goes mad as well. He wants to be Van Gough, nothing less will feed his ego. Final shot is Mr.Torbuck as the untamed savage, music can no longer soothe the beast within, etc. One long love letter to himself. Went on to make some nonsense with Rudolf Nureyev and Nastassia Kinski.

Film is a sort of omnibus of seventies attitudes and cinematic style. Bit of second hand Scorcese here and there. Lurches wildly into self parody.

Harvey Keitel indeed does his best work here, as lil' Jimmy "Fingers", a prodigy concert pianist turned debt collector, who works for his domineering father. Shot in cruel hues by cinematographer Michael Chapman, and excellently directed by the obsessive James Toback, this film is a rare gem of a find. Even football great Jim Brown has never been better. And you know what, this is one of Jean-Luc Goddard's favourite movies of all time!! Enough said.

Why do we want to spend the hour and a half that it takes to watch this movie in the company of a character so loathsome that we would do anything to avoid him if we met him in real life? Jimmy Fingers is arrogant, self-obsessed, sexually violent and just plain creepy. O.K., there are moments in which we get to see that he has a better side, when he comforts a destitute women who is crying in a doorway, or when he sticks by his small time hoodlum father, in spite of the fact that he is even more repellent than Fingers himself. There is so much in this movie to make you squirm from the no-holds barred, bloody violence and a painful proctological exam to the scenes in which Fingers annoys everyone in earshot by playing loud doo-wop music on his portable tape player and threatening violence towards anyone who objects. With its fine acting and totally unpredictable story-line, this film is undeniable entertaining, but it's appeal is a rather masochistic one.