Dark Streets

If you are a fan of Salomon Burke, Etta James, Dr. John, or just love blues and swing, "Dark Streets" would appear to be dream come true. In this tale of a doomed 1930s rich boy turned night club owner, even actresses Bijou Phillips and Izabella Miko hold their own as club singers delivering their songs with plenty of gusto and sex-appeal while the dancers and music scorch the screen. But the music and club act scenes cannot hide the movie's inept screenplay.

Besides the music, the cinematography is also stunning creating the noirest of atmospheres in the middle of the Great Depression. Murderous dark streets, threatening characters, a decadent night club, presented in rich palette of dark hues and swirling camera work. Unfortunately, soon this becomes irrelevant when the plot fails to deliver.

The story borrows heavily from "Chinatown" and 1940s/1950s film noirs, involving electrical power, greed, dissipation, betrayal, and murder. In able hands it could have been a compelling moral tale, but this poorly written movie lacks the required tension to maintain interest resorting to noir clichés (femme fatale) and contrived situations (heartbreak leads to cocaine) with subplots and characters that go nowhere. The dialogue attempts to generate some sparks here and there but the results are noir light - even Bogart and Bacall would have come out flat delivering the lines. To make matters worse, the main character is an uninteresting weakling who does not inspire much sympathy played by Gabriel Mann as if sleepwalking. Parts of the plot are ludicrous: a corrupt police lieutenant who wears a metal chest plate, a large amount of money that is never seeing again, a shrewd hostile governor is set up having sex at the club, characters murdered for no reason, etc.

If you like bluesy music, Busby Berkeley, a 1930s noir atmosphere and flashy camera work, you should enjoy some of this movie. Alas, "Dark Dreams" is neither "Chicago" nor "Chinatown" and while the musical acts sizzle the rest of the movie fizzles. If one would be able to only listen to the music with the voices turn off, it would be perfect. It gets 3 starts only for its music and some of its visuals.

New York, 1930s. Chaz Davenport is the owner of a new nightclub. The nightclub is popular and should be doing well but frequent power blackouts are harming business. He also owes money to a very shady character and now his friends are turning up dead.

Quite amateurish. Plot is unfocused and direction seems to be all about style rather than substance: smoky rooms, dazzling lights, flashy outfits, gravelly-voiced narration, people trying to talk like Humphrey Bogart but not having anywhere near the charisma to pull it off.

Performances are similar: hammy and unconvincing, performed by B-grade (at best) actors and actresses,

It all seems so superficial and clumsy, papered over by expensive-looking production in the hope that the audience doesn't notice that there's nothing of substance in the film.

I was looking forward to seeing this film as someone I know was involved with the production. But the movie I ended up seeing had nothing to do with what they told me was shot by the director. All I can figure out is that it was chopped up and edited to the point where it no longer made any sense. And the casting was awful. I read a copy of the shooting script. This is not the movie I read at all. I've been told this happens all the time to movies. Too many cooks in the editing room end up spoiling the soup. Boy, this movie should be used as an illustration on what not to do to material in an editing room in film schools.

The soundtrack is great but it's so overwhelming that half the time you can't even hear the dialog. What started out as a sci-fi noir ended up in a blender.

Maybe someday someone will make the movie I read and heard about. That one was truly original and could have been great.

1930s. Chaz (Gabriel Mann) owns a hip jazz bar called The Tower - all the clichés are there with ensemble bands and sexy divas headlining the locale. Unfortunately for Chaz the big opening is rife with problems. The power company can't cope with constant outages, his father just committed suicide and debts keep piling up with loan sharks out for their cut. Enter jazz, noire, visuals. And a overly ordinary, uninteresting and forgettable Izabella Miko as the key character of Madelaine.

Basically every scene is heavily stylised (maybe even overcooked in that department) and overflowing with cool collected musical moods. Add to that the constantly floating camera, pretty ladies and high regard for set-pieces - you have a feast for the eye and the ear. Unfortunately that's as far as the movie goes to please it's audience. All the stuff that is normally movie filler comes to the forefront, while the script and plot seems secondary and irrelevant (and some of the dialogue is plain corny). Almost like a 90-minute videoclip... And let's face it - most videoclips start getting boring after 4 minutes...

If you like the music you might prefer to omit the 'plot filler' and focus on the background flow of all that jazz and blues. Even more so that Toledo Diamond really steals the show...