Homicídio

Give me Joe Mantegna and William H. Macy as partners and I'll guarantee that there will be a movie worth watching. Macy has been moving up the chain, and is brilliant here.

The whole issue of Jewish persecution is woven in the story, and Mantegna is conflicted because he is Jewish, but obviously not a practicing one. As things go, his Jewishness is challenged by the investigation. "You say you are a Jew, and you can't read Hebrew. What are you then?" He is finally confronted with the reality of hate and his role as a cop takes second place to his Jewishness.

It is about realizing that he is nowhere until he finds out who he really is. The language of the police is raw and brings everything out into the open. Detective Gold (Mantegna) doesn't find himself at the end of the film. He has a ways to go, but now he has a direction.

Not that I thought Joe was incapable of acting, but it's a little hard to take a guy seriously after seeing them in junk like "Baby's Day Out." Nevertheless, he gives a wonderful performance in this very intriguing film that was written and directed by "The Spanish Prisoner's" David Mamet.

Like "The Spanish Prisoner", "Homicide" is a movie that must be paid attention to at all times or you will miss tiny, but very important details. I will admit that I missed a few of these details, but since I watched it in a film class, we discussed it the next day and other people pointed them out. Anyway, this style of work seems to be David Mamet's "signature" and I think it's great. I hope he wins an award some day.

Getting back to the movie, besides containing numerous small details, "Homicide" is a genuinely interesting story about a Jewish cop who has gotten out of touch with his religious side. It is only after he is assigned to a case involving a murdered Jewish woman, does he finally began to get in touch with his roots. Of course there is struggle, not to mention people who do not appear to be what they seemed. It's a good movie, though a little hard to get into at first, but don't let your mind wonder, or you could be missing a vital element to the plot.

Bobby Gold, a jewish homicide detective involved in tracking down a cop killer, stumbles onto the shooting of an elderly jewish lady. Although starting only very reluctantly, he gets drawn deeper and deeper into this second case, eventually getting involved with a militant pro-Israel group which causes him to question his own identity as a Jew. This naturally leads to neglect of the first case. Bad things happen as a result.

If you like Mamet films, then you'll certainly enjoy this one. As is typical, his tight dialogue creates wonderful tensions with a minimum of words and the acting is excellent. Unfortunately, the movie fails to live up to its promise. Part of the blame is in a relatively weak finale and a conclusion which goes by so fast you'll miss it if you blink. The real problem, however, is that we never develop any intimacy with the human relationships and personal conflicts which should be the heart of the movie but instead just end up providing support for the actual events taking place. We should be leaving the theater with the story playing over and over in our minds for some time to come, but instead we leave simply having been entertained and enthralled for the duration of the film. Not a bad thing, but not as good as it could have been.

Homicide detectives Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna) and Tim Sullivan (William H. Macy) were taken off the case of Robert Randolph in favor of the FBI. The FBI fumbles the arrest. With mounting racial resentment, the mayor orders the cops to take him alive. Gold stumbles onto a murder of an old Jewish grandmother who ran a store in a black neighborhood. The rumor is that she kept a fortune in the basement. The Jewish family uses their political influence to get Gold as the investigator. Gold is frustrated at losing the Randolph case. He's also not a proud Jew and dismisses this case which would test his Jewish ethnicity.

It's David Mamet writing and directing. The dialogue has his mannered style. It's hard-boiled. The visual style is stark. Some of it is off-putting. He's hitting the Jew card very hard right from the start. It's unnecessary. The central concept is intriguing. However, little things keep annoying me. Gold's gun gets taken and fired by a prisoner but there is no investigation afterwards. It shouldn't be up to Gold. There is supposedly a gunman across the way but they don't close the curtains. There are little problems all the way to the end. The most problematic is that Gold's switch feels too abrupt. In fact, I figured he's lying to them to pump for information. In general, the movie doesn't feel natural. There is an intriguing idea but I can't completely buy it.

While this picture could compare favorably with many of its type for nothing more than its use of action, suspense and realistic details regarding police work, it goes significantly further and becomes a character study of a man searching for an identity. A conscientious, no-nonsense detective, Gold has never become involved in his work to the extent that it has made him question his values, let alone his reason for existing. Without the point being forced upon us, we see a character with (seemingly) no home, no friends, no social activities: a decent man who has not connected with anything meaningful in life until circumstances force him to make significant choices.

Especially challenging to the viewer is the deliberately ambiguous ending in which there is reason to believe that Gold could choose either of the major alternatives available to him. He looks and feels like an outsider in the precinct. He now identifies with the Jew as an outsider. Could it be that he is actually considering.....?

See this provocative picture, and decide for yourself. Excellent performances and direction throughout.