Le Contrat

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.

Okay the story is this: De Niro made some lame movie name around 1969 Sam's Song that never saw the light of day. Fast forward a few years (say around 1980) and De Niro is a star so some joker gets a hold of Sam's Song, recuts it, adds some footage and viola! The Swap was born! Which is probably even worse than Sam's Song.

So if you are a De Niro diehard, you have been warned. But hey, so was I and I saw it anyway.

The revised title, "The Swap", introduces a certain amount of confusion. The viewer will spend the entire duration of this poor movie wondering what the producers are referring to as a "swap" and not come up with anything plausible. But where a neutral or bland lack of point to support the title would be bad enough, this production actively makes matters worse. This happens in the following way: one of the main characters (Ann) is portrayed by two actresses, one of whom is supposedly 10 years younger than the other. Infuriatingly, the younger actress looks nothing at all like the older actress, and the viewer is led to the FALSE conclusion that the character played by the older actress is an impostor, so that the "swap" concerns one person stealing another's identity. Nothing so interesting turns out to be the fact, of course, and nothing else turns up as a better candidate for the "swap." There are lots of GOOD movies to see; there's no reason to waste time with this one.

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.

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.