Rapsodia per un killer

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.

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.

This hard to find film is well worth the search. Kietel gives an amazing, painful performance as a brilliant pianist whose self-destructive neurosis seems to keep him from ever achieving greatness. The film has been called mysognyistic most likely due to the portrayal of little Jimmy "Fingers". I'd have to say the film itself deals a fairly rough hand to the character's mysogny. Jimmy's social ineptness with women is painful to watch. He alternates between the utmost charm and just plain disturbing street thugishness. All in all it's a powerful film and one of Kietel's best performances.

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.

This early movie of actor Harvey Keitel is still rather unknown and was always overshadowed by the successful Keitel and de Niro movies like Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver". With Scorsese and di Niro being absent in this production, it was Keitel's time for a leading part.

He plays the schizophrenic character "Fingers", a brutal repo man who is dreaming of a classical piano player career in a distant future beyond violence. He falls in love with an ignorant woman, tries to convince his father and mentor of his musical talents, but also has to take any dirty job to survive. Finally he takes his famous "last job" and tries to get a large amount of money from a brutal Mafia youngster, but has to face his biggest enemy - and his last big showdown.

"Fingers" is a rather calm movie which leaves enough place for Keitel to show the different personalities of "Fingers". There are dirty back roads, a bloody showdown and the tristesse of other sad New York stories, but not the glam and the roaring action of the Scorsese movies. And there are always evidences of hope and love which are finally crushed by the wheels of reality... Watch out for "Fingers", one of Harvey Keitel's best performances ever.