A Cobrança

This movie is the oldest one I've seen of Robert De Niro. I got it for a present from my cousin who knows I'm a die-hard De Niro freak.

The quality of the DVD wasn't excellent, but what can one expect from an almost forty-year old flick. "Sam's Song" is the small story of one Sam Nicoletti. He tries to write and make a living but isn't really succeeding. He gets invited by friends for a weekend. There he tries to relax and enjoy the moment of getting out of his boring life. Eventually some small things happen like couple's betrayal and some weekend loving. If you're a real De Niro fan you just have to see it once. He is the only positive thing in this movie from John C. Broderick and John Shade.

I gave this one a 6/10. The film isn't great, script is just below average, screen quality is mediocre... but De Niro shows early glimpse of his genius!

In 1969 Robert De Niro starred in an unreleased short film entitled 'Sam's Song,' about a group of people on a yacht, or something to such an effect. It seemed to have no plot – and no budget, either, as it was left on the cutting room floor: Where it should have stayed, but it didn't.

Because in 1980 Cannon Films got their hands on the footage. De Niro, by now a huge star (having been in 'Taxi Driver' and 'The Deer Hunter'), was obviously enough of a celebrity to market the picture. Slap his face on a few VHS covers, and you've got yourself a movie.

That's what Cannon did. They took the old footage and inserted it into an entirely new movie that had nothing to do with 'Sam's Song.' They called this new incarnation 'The Swap' – ironic, eh?

'The Swap' takes scenes from 'Sam's Song' and intercuts them with a cheesy film noir revenge story about a guy who gets out of jail to avenge the murder of his brother. It also re-writes its own plots to revolve around the original scenes. De Niro watches a porn movie in the beginning, so instead of merely assuming he likes pornography, 'The Swap' decides to add a little 'twist' into the plot: Sammy (De Niro) was a porn director and he made kiddie porn with 12 and 13-year-olds. Surprisingly, this fact is presented to us in the film quite casually – it's never mentioned twice. Sammy's friends don't care, and neither do the filmmakers, evidently.

Sam's brother Vito, freshly released from jail, decides to do some investigating and unveils a secret plot that has something to do with Sam's murder. Halfway through the film we get a tacky flashback of Sam aboard a yacht with his friends. This was essentially the only footage of the original 'Sam's Song' and it makes no sense to put it in 'The Swap' because it has absolutely nothing to do with the story.

I don't know what to say about this movie because it really isn't a movie. It's a sloppy promotion for a film company that took fifteen minutes of footage from an unfinished film and slapped them in between scenes from another.

It's about as nonsensical as taking 'Raging Bull' and dropping scenes from 'Once Upon a Time in America' in various places, then trying to create a plot connecting the two together. Final analysis: Utterly ridiculous, and not even for De Niro's fans as it was clearly made against his own cooperation.

I don't think this movie itself is the worst ever put to screen and we all know De Niro can act, so I'm going to have to blame the no name directors who shot this movie in two different sittings and obviously had no idea how to bring the best acting abilities out of someone. De Niro's role for this movie was shot by one director for a movie with a different title and then later inserted into a re-cut version, which is evident by the fact that two different actresses portray Erica even though the time-line between the flashback scenes are only ten years. It doesn't even look like the same person. The movie ends with a lot of unanswered questions but that's only because the filmmakers ran out of money and never finished making it. So all in all, don't expect a ton of entertainment out of this film. Watch it if only to see a very early Robert De Niro performance under bad directing.

I would say I took a gamble by purchasing this movie, but it's hard to constitute $6.99 as a gamble. It came in a boxed with set with another old DeNiro movie, "Born to Run," which I haven't watched yet. Well, like I cynically expected, DeNiro is NOT the star of this film. Sure, his name appears first in the opening credits, but I'm guessing that's because the film was re-issued in 1980 and by then, DeNiro was already a moderately big star. The story basically centers around his character, but we only see him once in the first scene, and then momentarily in flashbacks. This was back when DeNiro had that Tom Selleck-like moustache, looking like an out-of-work porn star.

Not to be totally negative, the unknown actor who plays the main character gives a pretty good, though one-note, performance. The rest of the actors--except for DeNiro--could've been just as effective reading their lines off cue cards. And judging by the way this film was made--like a third-rate student film--I wouldn't be surprised if they were.

The cheap production values are as clear as day, but the film could've saved its integrity with a good script. Some of the dialogue is horribly laughable. But for $6.99, you often get what you pay for. At least it will serve as good filler for my extensive video collection.

My score: 4 (out of 10)

I have only seen the 'Line of Fire' version of this film, and it was frankly just unbearable. The acting from Charnota is awfully wooden and the rubbish lines they churn out just get worse (eg. "it's written all over your face like egg"). However the film is intriguing as it's probably De Niro's worst film, but despite this it has an interesting look and setting to it. With it's bleak, porno filled and gritty American streets it's a perfect setting for De Niro, particularly as he goes on to embody such settings in Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or even Sleepers. Theres also a nice seen on the beach where De Niro acts out a film he saw, and it's intercut as De Niro plays the shooter and the victim. This act is again like an incarnation of De Niro's later action of pretending to shoot himself (in the mirror) in Taxi Driver. However despite my fumbling attempts to find some good points to the film, it is terrible and very hard to watch as it's so bad. De Niro in the film is the better of the cast and perhaps the original 'Sam's Song' version is better.