O Filho da Máfia

Unlike the majority of my fellow reviewers, I really like this movie and am proud to say I own a copy. It's very funny in part and everyone gives a good performance. Even Geraldine Smith is hysterical. Whoever did the casting did a great job.

Spike of Bensonhurst is a lot of fun. It's an only slightly idealized look at life in Brooklyn's ethnic enclaves in the 1980s, by former Warhol co-conspirator Paul Morrissey. With amusing and well deployed performances by Mitchell and by Borgnine as the neighborhood Mob boss he runs afoul of, it's one of the few Brooklyn- or New York-set movies from that era that actually looks like it was filmed there, not on a set. (Even Martin Scorcese's films of the period - although not his 1970s movies, of course - look slick by comparison.)

Maybe people don't like the fact that Spike implies strongly that life goes on even amidst crack, ethnic violence, and corruption and doesn't preach about these things - just presents them as facts of the local situation, without letting them get in the way of humor? Somehow, the movie leaves you amused and feeling good in spite or even because of some of the more graphic stuff it shows you.

I grew up in Brooklyn. I knew Spike and his friends. Their names and faces were different, but their lives were the same. If you treat this movie as a political statement you will be offended. If you treat this movie as entertainment you'll suffer. But if you treat this movie as a sociological exercise, you will be enlightened. No movie made before or since, has captured the essence of Brooklyn so effectively. Story, plot progression, and emotive content are deliberately sacrificed to the end of painting a realistic portrait of both the subjects and their neighborhood. At the film's conclusion, the characters, like their environs, develop little. Such is Brooklyn.

This is an odd movie. The script and acting are toned-down John Waters, the plot structure is no more than it has to be (and sometimes not even that), but the look of the film, especially the composition of shots, is beautiful, careful, and coldly objective. Morrissey has a unique eye, demonstrated on the cheap in "Trash" and displayed here in surreal, over-saturated color.

This is one strange movie, and that's why I love it so much. The actors overact, the lead actor is a jerk, his Portuguese sidekick is a riot, and the last scene is strangely touching and uplifting. Oh, and the dialogue has to be heard to be believed. No, this is no Godfather, but I doubt that that was Paul Morrissey's intention. If you don't take it too seriously, you're in for one strange, fun viewing. Oh, and the Spanish pop music soundtrack by Coati Mundi is just great! I'm not joking, either. . . Gus Van Sant should have remade this instead of Psycho.