Mélodie pour un tueur

Harvey Keitel indeed does his best work here, as lil' Jimmy "Fingers", a prodigy concert pianist turned debt collector, who works for his domineering father. Shot in cruel hues by cinematographer Michael Chapman, and excellently directed by the obsessive James Toback, this film is a rare gem of a find. Even football great Jim Brown has never been better. And you know what, this is one of Jean-Luc Goddard's favourite movies of all time!! Enough said.

This early movie of actor Harvey Keitel is still rather unknown and was always overshadowed by the successful Keitel and de Niro movies like Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver". With Scorsese and di Niro being absent in this production, it was Keitel's time for a leading part.

He plays the schizophrenic character "Fingers", a brutal repo man who is dreaming of a classical piano player career in a distant future beyond violence. He falls in love with an ignorant woman, tries to convince his father and mentor of his musical talents, but also has to take any dirty job to survive. Finally he takes his famous "last job" and tries to get a large amount of money from a brutal Mafia youngster, but has to face his biggest enemy - and his last big showdown.

"Fingers" is a rather calm movie which leaves enough place for Keitel to show the different personalities of "Fingers". There are dirty back roads, a bloody showdown and the tristesse of other sad New York stories, but not the glam and the roaring action of the Scorsese movies. And there are always evidences of hope and love which are finally crushed by the wheels of reality... Watch out for "Fingers", one of Harvey Keitel's best performances ever.

This hard to find film is well worth the search. Kietel gives an amazing, painful performance as a brilliant pianist whose self-destructive neurosis seems to keep him from ever achieving greatness. The film has been called mysognyistic most likely due to the portrayal of little Jimmy "Fingers". I'd have to say the film itself deals a fairly rough hand to the character's mysogny. Jimmy's social ineptness with women is painful to watch. He alternates between the utmost charm and just plain disturbing street thugishness. All in all it's a powerful film and one of Kietel's best performances.

Well, Reservoir Dogs fans, if you've been wondering really where the film is where Mr. White plays Mr. Blonde, this might be it. Only don't expect the same form of psychopathic behavior. Keitel's Jimmy Fingers is a sort of time bomb at times needing to be either detonated or waiting to be set off, and there's even an echo too (or rather the other movie is an echo of this) in Do the Right Thing. But James Toback's script is very particular about his various, half annoying half dangerous tendencies carrying around a radio and a knack for classical music and grit. And Keitel moves in this world like a man so within his own mind that the only way he can act sometimes is in bottling it up before it comes out. It's a very tough performance to pull off, as there's more fascination in what the character completely lacks than in his virtues. It's sometimes teeters even on becoming very uncomfortable to sit through, just in the psychological sense. We may not hate Jimmy Fingers, but he can test patience like it's nothing.

Still, Keitel makes it such a character of idiosyncrasies and at the same time a weird kind of charm that at first sort of reminded me of his debut in Who's That Knocking at My Door. He's aiming for concert pianist, of the level on Carnegie Hall standards. But his father also has him collecting/making bets, and thus getting into things of a sometimes violent and ugly nature. And there's always that radio, blasting out the 'golden oldies' of the kind they used to play on CBS FM in New York. There's even a touch of the Brando-type character in Keitel's mood and mannerisms at times, plus that compulsory sexual nature with women. Towards the end of the film this becomes almost too perverse to handle, and Toback always deals with such dicey material head-on, without pulling any tricks with the camera (in fact, he only so occasionally moves it). While the filmmaker tests the waters with possibly become unnerving and off-its-hinges with watching such unconventional material, more or less he pulls off what he wants, and Keitel is a force to be reckoned with as an actor here. He may lack the realistic volcanic force and wit of a Mr. White, but the not-totally-sadistic Mr. Blonde comes out with just a great hint of the obsessed artist in there too (and what great music there is).

In terms of referring to the 2005 French remake, the Beat That My Heart Skipped, I found that it might be one of those rare cases where the remake does out-do the original, at least in terms of dramatic involvement and in really getting more into the relationship between the father and son (plus there was more ambiguity in terms of the young man's mind state in the French version). But Fingers still holds its own decades later by standing out in the crime genre of the period, and it's up there in Keitel's underrated cannon of work.

Many times over the years James Toback has been referred to as ‘brilliant', and a good deal of those times the film ‘Fingers' is mentioned in the same sentence.

It stands right there with Resevoir Dogs, Bad Lieutenant, and Mean Streets-all Harvey Keitel films which have over the years gotten far more applause than they did earlier..

Actually the premise is just enough unique: the concert pianist from the wrong side of the tracks, the carefree and confused collector for his bookie father.

Toback's dialogue is very raw, but it is on target for the very raw world he describes.

Michael Gazzo gives one of his best performances ever as Keitel's father.

Not to be missed, but if you look to Toback to recreate this magic with his later efforts, ‘The Pick-Up Artist' or `Exposed', don't waste your time. Even his recent `Two Girls and a Guy' might have been `Two Mil Down the Drain' without the superb performance of Robert Downey Jr.