City of Hope

Like another Sayles film, Matewan, this really is one of the little known very solid films of our time. This precursor for Crash is a compelling look at the substantial impact strangers may have on each other.

While the acting is at times somewhat melodramatic, the direction of the film is typical of the brilliant Sayles. The film contains some very interesting tracking shots where inter-connected characters unwittingly enter and exit each other's lives.

Unfortunately, the film's title often has it mistaken for the awful "City of Joy" featuring Patrick Swayze

I've seen several John Sayles films and have been more or less impressed with all of them. This finely wrought and under appreciated little treasure though is probably his most complex and evocative. It's a formidable task tying together the loose ends of lives Sayles starts with into a coherent drama. All this done in the milieu of a corrupt city, tangled relationships and madness. Even the humour is bleak. There's nothing here that employs maudlin sentiment or melodrama, though. Somehow the tragedy is alleviated by a pervasive and dramatically ironic atmosphere of hope. It's in the pours and veins of this movie.. there's a human quality to it that's difficult to pin down but once detected transforms it into something special.

"City of Hope": Let writer/director John Sayles pull you into one huge, HUGE, swirling Swirling SWIRLING mmmMMesSsmEEEesSSSMsmeSss of corruption. A big city has all the typical problems. Everyone operates realistically – i.e., you scratch my back, maybe I'll scratch yours. Right and wrong are lost concepts. Social and political survival tactics are practiced by the hunters and the hunted. No one is clean. Deals are made. Victims are collateral damage. It is a realistic story, with slightly enlarged dramatic characters. You won't laugh. (P.S. - See John Sayles film "The Secret of Roan Inish". It is nothing like "City of Hope" but it's amazing and wonderful.)

A fantastic movie. Superb. Excellent. A keeper. I am definitely going to rent and re-view Brother from Another Planet. Ensemble type of movie. Low-key score. Dead on performances--everybody tight and sticking to the story, no histrionics or dopey movie-star closeups. If there's a continuum of corruption movies with On the Waterfront on one extreme (intrusive score, ridiculous script, pandering to gorgeous movie stars) and Hands Over the City on the other (realistic portrayal of life with Rod Steiger and lots of extras), then this movie was closer to Hands Over the City. It's not neo-realism, but the way in which everyone's history haunts and thwarts them was excellent. And of course, the last scene is something to rewind and watch over and over again.

Unsettling and deeply emotional take on the average American city (big or small) by John Sayles ("Lone Star", "The Sunshine State"), who manages to mend an unlikely story of local politics, corruption, and mistrust among the citizens of a New Jersey town into one is remarkable. Among the many ordeals that occur here are is the fed up son (Vincent Spano) who wants to break out of the already arranged enviroment set up by his dishonest contractor father (Tony Lo Bianco) and one of the town's councilmen (Joe Morton) who looks into the case of two black kids who accuse a college professor of approaching them in a city park at night.

"City of Hope" has the emotional feel of a movie made by John Cassavetes or Martin Scorsese carefully mixed together. Plus, the camera work of Robert Richardson is great in showing the viewer the bleak outlook of an urban city and its inhabitants. And it showcases Sayles' best work our of the movies that he's made.