33 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
33 lines
3.3 KiB
Plaintext
making your first feature film ain't easy .
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assemble a decent , if not , strong cast , as writer/director robert moresco has done with one eyed king , and you're already ahead of the game .
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but rehash old plot lines , tired dialogue , and standard clich ? s , and a well-intentioned effort such as this one could jeopardize your chance at a second feature film .
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how many more movies do we need about a rough neighborhood full of lifelong friends hopelessly turned to crime or worse ?
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the enormous catalog of such movies might dissuade a filmmaker from making yet another , but here we have it .
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again .
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five irish kids in nyc's hell's kitchen make an overemotional pact over some stolen rings on an anonymous rooftop .
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with teary music .
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and slow motion .
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in the film's first scene .
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the kids grow up to be fairly worthless adults , unable or unwilling to make their way out of the heat of the kitchen .
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leading the clueless pack is william baldwin as a good-hearted guy who watches out for his buddies and is in tight with local mob head armand assante .
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i'd like to say that his character gets involved over his head in some sort of blah , blah , blah , but all we seem to get are little tastes of possible plot points .
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he's concerned about buddy jason gedrick's heroin abuse .
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he sticks up for jim breuer after he impregnates baldwin's character's sister .
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he looks into who might be pushing the most moronic-looking counterfeit cash ever made ( a genuinely funny touch ) .
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but none of this ever really amounts to anything .
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it seems that moresco's greater concern is to provide that intangible " slice of life " , that flavor of the neighborhood that everyone's been trying to evoke since scorsese's early work .
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so , we get the drunk guys , hugging and singing together at the local bar , to prove to us that they really love each other .
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( do people actually do this ! ? )
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we get a lot of tough street talk -- usually mumbled for effect -- and a whole lot of the f-word , whether it sounds like it fits or not .
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we also get a handful of good actors in small roles that seem to lack purpose .
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bruno kirby , chazz palminteri , you know , guys you've seen in movies just like this one before .
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assante is intelligent casting as the man that everyone fears , and baldwin's performance is adequate , but most of the rest of the cast jump into the tough guy persona so thoroughly that it's almost funny .
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moresco , a theater guy and sometimes tv writer ( including the series falcone ) , obviously labored over this one as anyone might a first child , but the content is probably too personal .
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as a result , the movie's style is heavy-handed , in need of a considerable amount of toning down .
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nearly every time an action by the grown up gang recalls something they did as kids , moresco reminds us -- boy does he remind us .
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with slow dissolves to the earlier scene , running in slow motion , complete with dialogue from the present , just in case we don't comprehend the link to the past .
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moresco needs to either trust his audience's intelligence , or have more faith in his own presentation rather than beat us over the head with it .
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his next project should have a little more personal distance , and a lot more subtlety .
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if he actually gets that chance .
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reviewed as part of our 2001 boston film festival coverage ( feature story coming soon ) .
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