Gotham

Made during her bombshell period, Virginia Madsen is perfectly cast as an elusive femme fatale in Gotham (1988), a made-for-television movie for the Showtime Channel and that was part of a run of sexy roles in the late 1980s that also included Slam Dance (1987), and into 1990s with The Hot Spot (1990) and forgettable erotic thrillers such as Caroline at Midnight (1994) and Blue Tiger (1994). Fortunately, this one stars Tommy Lee Jones and whose angle is a neo-noir fused with a ghost story.

“You ever find yourself walking down a dark street, you think you hear footsteps coming up slowly, somebody just out of sight?” This question kickstarts the story as Charles Rand (Colin Bruce) asks down-on-his-luck private investigator Eddie Mallard (Jones) to find his wife Rachel (Madsen) and tell her to leave him alone. The only problem: she’s been dead for over ten years. Rand offers Mallard a lot of money to take the case, which he accepts even though, as he confesses to his friend Tim (Kevin Jarre) later on, he fears that he’s feeding into this man’s delusions.

Eddie humors his client and his odd ramblings about his wife (“She lusts for daylight. She wants power in the daylight.”). The man is truly haunted by her death and apparent resurrection and this intrigues Eddie – that and the hefty paycheck. One day, Charles spots Rachel across the street and asks Eddie to go over and talk to her. With her long white gloves, vintage hat tilted at just the right angle and retro black dress, Rachel looks like she stepped right out of a 1940s film noir. Of course, she denies knowing Charles and humors Eddie by going out for a drink with him where she explains that she is a woman of expensive tastes.

Rachel shows up at Eddie’s office and apologizes for coming on so strong the other day and takes him out for a bite to eat as a way of apologizing. She comes across as a slightly sad, lonely wealthy lady. He’s intrigued by her stunning looks and enigmatic past. Their paths cross again as she wanders out of the smoke on a deserted city street one night. The deeper he goes into the case the more he realizes it’s not as simple as it seems and like most noirs he finds himself drawn into an increasingly complex web with Rachel at its center. Is she really the deceased wife or is this merely the delusions of a crazy man?
 
The movie has odd beats that occasionally disrupt its traditional narrative, such as a scene where Eddie and Rachel are serenaded in an alleyway by a dirty bum with an immaculate acoustic guitar and a beautiful voice. It’s a poignant moment as the camera stays on Madsen’s face as Rachel reacts to “Danny Boy,” her eyes gradually welling up and a tear runs down her face. With the help of his very talented crew that includes the likes of David Cronenberg’s longtime production designer Carol Spier, legendary cinematographer Michael Chapman (Raging Bull) and composer George S. Clinton (Austin Powers), writer/director Lloyd Fonvielle creates a suitable neo-noir mood and atmosphere with a touch of the supernatural, such as a spooky shot of Rachel submerged in murky water, a gloved hand reaching out to Eddie.
 
With her old school looks, Virginia Madsen could have been a Classic Hollywood movie star and is perfectly cast as an elusive femme fatale cum woman out of time. She does an excellent job of coming across as this sweet, alluring presence and then transforms into a vulgar, vengeful creature. The actor is more than believable as a woman that could seduce men into doing her bidding and destroying their lives in the process.

Tommy Lee Jones is well cast as a world-weary gumshoe who thinks he knows all the angles until he takes on this case and becomes entangled in Rachel’s web. Like Rachel, Eddie undergoes his own transformation and Jones does an excellent job of conveying a man who has seen it all to one obsessed with a woman that tears his life apart.
 
The critics of the time weren’t too kind to Gotham. The Washington Post's Tom Shales wrote, "Madsen is a sensuously spooky Rachel. She is also quite naked in two or three scenes, popping up, literally, in the bathtub, and falling out of a refrigerator. Madsen holds Jones and the camera captive. Maybe it doesn't matter that the whole thing is senseless." In her review for the Los Angeles Times, Lynne Heffley wrote, "What viewers fall victim to is a flawed vision. Suspense fizzles into steamy homage to Madsen’s beauty, clad and unclad; New York City locales are unbelievably underpopulated; a street bum sings “Danny Boy"-all of it-and Madsen’s exquisite lips are either framing romance novel banalities or a favorite obscenity." The New York Times’ Walter Goodman described it as “a lugubrious telling of a story that at its best is incomprehensible.”
 
“It may be a dream but it’s one of those dreams you can’t wake up from,” Eddie says at one point and it is the narrow line Gotham treads between what is real and what we perceive as real. And isn’t that all down to perception anyway? One person’s reality could be another’s dream. Since this movie is a neo-noir typically things don’t go well for the protagonist but Fonvielle twists this convention so that his main character is spared while another character is doomed. He does an excellent job of grounding the movie in its own reality so we’re never sure what is real and what is a dream except for little details that he uses as signposts along the way. It’s a tricky balancing acting between the ridiculous and the sublime but then again, isn’t all a matter of perception?

Me and Orson Welles

They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes as you’re liable to discover they have clay feet, rarely living up to one’s expectations. Me and Orson Welles (2008) explores the good and bad aspects of hero worship. Based on Robert Kaplow's novel of the same name, the Richard Linklater-directed film chronicles the eventful week in a life of teenager Richard Samuels (Zac Efron) who finds himself cast in a minor role in Orson Welles’ (Christian McKay) legendary stage adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in 1937. The aspiring, 22-year-old wunderkind set the play in modern times as a bare-stage production with comparisons to the rise of Fascism in Italy and Nazi Germany.
 
We meet the 17-year-old Richard when he arrives in New York City with dreams of becoming a working actor. In typical Linklater fashion, he meets Gretta Adler (Zoe Kazan) in a record store and they break the ice over a mutual admiration they have for Richard Rodgers as “There’s a Small Hotel” plays in the store. The young woman says, “They’re like lullabies, aren’t they?” She’s in the city trying to make it as a playwright, hoping that one of her stories is published in The New Yorker.
 
The scene is a sweet, unassuming meet-cute that is vintage Linklater. “What I want is for one person on this earth to read something I wrote and say, ‘You’re terrific,’” Gretta says wistfully in a moment that echoes Jesse and Celine at the beginning of Before Sunrise (1995). Like that couple, Richard and Gretta are two young people that meet by chance and connect instantly over their respective aspirations. This opening scene could be a self-contained film unto itself and one almost wants to follow these two-young people getting to know each other in the Big Apple.
 

By chance, Richard stumbles across Welles attempting to put on a production of Julius Caesar and impresses him with his drumming and singing (a jingle for Wheaties no less). He appeals to his vanity while also showing his knowledge of theater. Richard soon finds himself immersed in the sights and sounds of the Mercury Theater with Sonja Jones (Claire Danes) putting him to work immediately, answering phones. He finds himself drawn to her only to find out that every man in the company is pursuing her with little success. Claire Danes is fine in the role and Sonja is nice enough but the actor does little to suggest why all the men in the Mercury Theater lust after her.
 
Welles casts Richard as Lucius but soon finds that “the principal occupation of the Mercury Theater is waiting for Orson,” as fellow actor Norman Lloyd (Leo Bill) puts it. Me and Orson Welles goes on to chronicle the tumultuous production of Caesar, from the rough rehearsals to the problematic previews to its eventual triumph juxtaposed with Richard’s coming-of-age story.

Zac Efron captures Richard’s earnest romanticism that comes with youth and a lack of worldly experience. This lack of knowledge gives him the courage to approach Welles in the first place as he has nothing to lose. He’s hardly an innocent, though, as he goes in on a bet with two other actors to see who can bed Sonja first and, later, sets off the theater sprinkler system, sabotaging the play and then refusing to admit he did it when Welles confronts him. Richard is a rebellious teenager that doesn’t know any better.
 

His wholesome aspects come out in Gretta’s presence. Zoe Kazan’s natural charisma and her character’s playful zest for life are infinitely more interesting than Sonja’s seen-it-all attitude. It is obvious right away that Richard and she don’t have the same kind of easy-going connection that he has with Gretta. While Richard is physically attracted to Sonja, it is with Gretta that he connects with on a more meaningful level.
 
Christian McKay and Eddie Marsan are perfectly cast as the arrogant Welles and his long-suffering business partner John Houseman respectively. The former plays Welles as a pompous ass who doubles as a genius. He does an excellent job approximating the man’s distinctive voice and affectations. The latter matches him as the one person in the group willing to stand up to the him as he tries to keep the lights on while Welles follows his muse. McKay’s layered performance goes deeper than mere impersonation with moments that show his humanity, the strain of carrying the entire production on his back, and his ability to take credit for every aspect of the production in one moment and make someone feel like they are the most important person in the company in the next.
 
Linklater immerses us in Welles lore, such as how he would take an ambulance from the theater to his radio gigs so he could run red lights and make better time. We also see his famous affinity for magic and he even reads from The Magnificent Ambersons, a book that he would adapt into a one-hour radio play in 1939 and a film in 1942. The filmmaker also presents several examples of fascinating behind-the-scenes drama, such as one actor (Ben Chaplin) experiencing paralyzing stage fright minutes before going on stage until Welles talks him down through sheer force of will. We see the fragile egos of some actors and others that brim with confidence. They may have all sorts of weaknesses and inadequacies as people do but when they are on stage, radio or film they are brilliant artists that make art come vividly to life. The reward is the adulation from the audience, which is a unique high that some actors chase their entire career.
 

Me and Orson Welles started out as a young-adult novel by Robert Kaplow. He had been inspired of a photograph he had seen of 15-year-old Arthur Anderson playing a lute, cast as Lucius in Welles’ production of Julius Caesar. Kaplow sought out Anderson, found out that he was still alive and living New York City, and based much of the novel on the man’s recollections from that time. Richard Linklater was so taken with Kaplow’s book that he paid for the rights and made it independently. Linklater identified with Welles as a fellow indie filmmaker: “He was doing in the 40s and 50s what everyone else was doing in the 80s and 90s.”
 
Linklater was faced with the daunting task of casting someone to play the iconic Welles. Kaplow told him about a one-man show entitled, Rosebud: The Lives of Orson Welles, written by Mark Jenkins and starring Christian McKay, that was arriving in New York City for Off Broadway run after rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He saw the play and was so impressed by the actor’s portrayal of Welles, from a young genius to an old man filled with regrets, that he cast him in the role. To prepare for the part, McKay listened to hundreds of hours of interviews and recalled his own arrogant youth. Linklater worked with the actor for months on portraying Welles.
 
Principal photography began in the Isle of Man in February 2008, shooting the Mercury Theater scenes in an old theater before moving on to Pinewood Studios in England where the exterior scenes of 1930s New York City were shot. According to Linklater, “We built one little street in Pinewood with a greenscreen at the end and every single exterior was shot on it, from different angles, dressed a different way.” The film crew went to New York City to shoot some photographs and a small amount of footage for digital effects.

“You know, sometimes you remember a week for the rest of your life,” Richard says partway through the film. In his brief tenure with the Mercury Theater, he does a lot of growing up, learning important lessons in life courtesy of Welles. Some of Richard’s mistakes can be attributed to his young age and his lack of life experiences as well as immaturity. He’s a hormonal teenager ruled by his libido. It is Gretta that keeps him grounded and the film ends on a wonderfully optimistic note as she and Richard are reunited. What will happen to them? Who knows but as she tells him, “It’s all ahead of us.”
 
 
SOURCES
Brooks, Xan. “Richard Linklater: ‘I’m not like Orson Welles. I’m a quiet director.’’ The Guardian. November 30, 2009.

Byrnes, Paul. “Me and Orson Welles.” The Sydney Morning Herald. July 31, 2010.

Dawtrey, Adam. “Director P.O.V.: Richard Linklater.” Variety. October 16, 2008.
 
Express. “Very Wellesian: Richard Linklater Discusses His New Film, Me and Orson Welles.” Washington Post. December 9, 2009.

Lim, Dennis. “Citizen Welles as Myth in the Making.” The New York Times. November 20, 2009.

Richards, Olly. “Claire Danes, Me and Orson Welles. Empire. February 1, 2008.

Manhattan Murder Mystery

Woody Allen was in trouble. Coming off the success of Husbands and Wives (1992), he was gearing up to make Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) with his then-wife Mia Farrow when their marriage broke up amidst allegations that he sexually assaulted one of their children, which resulted in a messy and very public custody battle over their three children. He responded by doing what he does best: making movies. He reunited with screenwriting partner Marshall Brickman and co-star Diane Keaton for a lightweight yet engaging comedy that, while receiving strong critical notices, failed to ignite the box office.

Larry (Allen) and Carol (Keaton) Lipton are middle-aged Manhattanites that have settled into a comfortable, routine existence, enduring each other’s passions (he loves hockey, she the opera). They’re also suffering a bit from empty nest syndrome and are worried that they are going to end up like Paul (Jerry Adler) and Lillian (Lynn Cohen) House, an older couple that lives down the hall: “Just another dull, aging couple with our little walks,” as Carol puts it. She fears they are turning into “a pair of comfortable old shoes,” and is looking for a spark to rekindle their relationship.

It comes in an unlikely form: Lillian dies suddenly from a heart attack. Initially, Larry and Carol think nothing of it, but over dinner with friends, she recalls how healthy Lillian was while Ted (Alan Alda), a friend of the Liptons, suggests that maybe she was killed by her husband. Later, Carol remarks that Paul seemed a little too upbeat so soon after her death. She decides to investigate further with Ted’s help, which makes skeptical Larry jealous. Did Paul really kill his wife or are Larry and Carol merely going through a midlife crisis and this is their way of dealing with it?

After her small role in Radio Days (1987), it was great to see Allen and Keaton reunited on-screen in another film. They slip effortlessly into their familiar rhythms, bantering back and forth as Carol immediately latches on to the murder mystery angle while Larry remains stubbornly unconvinced. Allen and Keaton clearly bring the best out of each other and it’s as if their characters from Annie Hall (1977) got married and settled into predictable domesticity. He establishes the Liptons’ stifling predictable routine early on in the film as Larry looks forward to watching a Bob Hope movie on television that night only to complain, “I don’t know why they put it on so late.” The Woody Allen of Manhattan (1979) would’ve stayed up late with Mariel Hemingway to watch it. The Woody Allen of this film, however, has gotten too old and set in his ways. This murder mystery is exactly what he and Carol need to rekindle the spark in their relationship.

Keaton, in particular, is wonderful as the instigator – getting the Liptons out of their rut with her fixation on Lillian’s murder. She brings her trademark vibrant energy and screen presence to the role. While Larry is content with where they’re at as a couple at this stage in their lives, Carol wants something more, like starting up a restaurant with Ted and then trying to solve Lillian’s murder. It is great to see her playing a proactive character while Allen is the passive one. Carol hones her amateur detective skills with Ted and the scenes where they excitedly theorize about the murder like kids are some of the best moments in the film. As he tells her at one point, Yes, this is crazy. But soon we’ll be too old to do anything crazy.” Alan Alda also shines in these scenes. With his knack for delivering witty banter, he is a perfect fit for Allen’s films and it is a shame he wasn’t in more of them as he really should’ve become part of his stable of actors.

Once again, Allen acts as the ideal foil for Keaton, responding to Carol’s newfound zeal for murder mysteries with his trademark neurotic angst (“You gotta go back to your shrink…You know how General Motors recalls defective cars? You gotta go in for a tune-up.”). Larry complains and criticizes what she’s doing but none of it deters her. Allen continued to show his knack for physical comedy as evident in the scene in which Anjelica Huston’s stylish writer teaches Larry how to play poker. It isn’t until an hour in that he realizes what he must do – take more of an interest in Carol’s obsession with Lillian’s murder if he wants to avoid them drifting apart. He’s also jealous of Ted and his boyish enthusiasm for her. It isn’t until he goes on a stakeout with her and they see something suspicious that Larry is finally convinced of what Carol has been saying all along. He finally believes her and goes from being passive to assertive.

The screenplay for Manhattan Murder Mystery originally started out as an embryonic incarnation of Annie Hall co-written with Marshall Brickman but Allen didn’t feel that it was substantial enough even though he loved mysteries and had always wanted to make one. He told Brickman that he should write and direct it and he would star in it. Over various rewrites, this element was abandoned as he decided to go in a different direction. He even told Brickman to go off and make it on his own but this didn’t happen. In 1992, Allen contacted Brickman and they worked on the story some more.

Allen had originally written the role of Carol for his then-wife Mia Farrow but after they divorced and became in embroiled in a contentious custody battle over their children, he called Diane Keaton and asked her to play the role of Carol. She immediately accepted. The film was shot in the fall of 1992 on the streets of Greenwich Village and the Upper West Side. For Allen, making the film was a form of escape as the “past year was so exhausting that I wanted to just indulge myself in something I could relax and enjoy.”

He found it very therapeutic working with Keaton again. After getting over her initial panic during her first scene with co-star Alan Alda, Keaton slipped back into her old rhythm with Allen. Anjelica Huston observed that the set was “oddly free of anxiety, introspection and pain,” and this was due to Keaton’s presence. According to Allen, Keaton changed the dynamic of the film as “I always look sober and normal compared to Keaton. I turn into the straight man.”

Manhattan Murder Mystery enjoyed decent reviews. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and called it an “accomplished balancing act.” Newsweek’s David Ansen wrote, “On screen, Keaton and Allen have always been made for each other: they still strike wonderfully ditsy sparks.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Although, Manhattan Murder Mystery struggles with its own contrivances, it achieves a gentle, nostalgic grace and a hint of un-self-conscious wisdom.” The USA Today’s Mike Clark gave it four out of four stars and wrote, “It’s very, very funny, and there’s no mystery about that.” In his review for the Washington Post, Desson Howe wrote, “There is however, little ‘new’ in this film. Allen and Keaton are essentially playing Alvy Singer and Annie Hall gone middle-aged.” Entertainment Weekly gave it a “B” rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Allen and Keaton make an endearing team. It’s a pleasure to see them reunited, not just because we’re spared Mia Farrow’s dishrag mopiness – surely the one piece of positive fallout from the Allen-Farrow split – but because Keaton’s smiling radiance has only deepened with the years.”

Manhattan Murder Mystery takes an amusing look at a married couple whose life has become safe and routine only to be revitalized by murder. It warns of the danger of not being open to something new, be it opening a restaurant or solving a murder. Obviously, there are things that you do every day that are unavoidably predictable – that’s just life – but when this extends to what you do with your spouse you run the risk of losing sight of what made it so exciting to be with them in the first place. It happens all the time and as the film points out, you need to take an active interest in what your spouse wants.

When Manhattan Murder Mystery was released in 1993, the highly contentious court case between Allen and Farrow was fresh in people’s minds and it impacted on the film’s box office as it failed to make back its modest budget. To add insult to injury, TriStar Pictures ended their deal with him. There was speculation at the time that the deal wasn’t extended due to his personal problems and that his films weren’t very profitable but he denied it in interviews. Undeterred, he simply cut a deal with another studio and continued making films, bouncing back with Bullets over Broadway (1994), which garnered 7 Academy Award nominations with Dianne Wiest winning for Best Supporting Actress. Manhattan Murder Mystery holds a special place in the hearts of many Allen fans as it was callback to the days of Annie Hall and Manhattan and was the last time he and Keaton appeared in a film together.

SOURCES

Bjorkman, Stig. Woody Allen on Woody Allen. Grove Press. 1993.

De Curtis, Anthony. “What’s With Woody?” Toronto Star. September 5, 1993.

Dowd, Maureen. “Diane and Woody, Still a Fun Couple.” The New York Times. August 15, 1993.

Fine, Marshall. “Woody’s Take.” USA Today. August 18, 1993.

Lax, Eric. Conversations with Woody Allen. Alfred A. Knopf. 2007.

Span, Paula. “Here Comes the Judgment.” Washington Post. May 4, 1993.

Carlito's Way

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“When I went to Berlin and I was watching it in Berlin after it opened and did okay in the United States, I remember watching in Berlin and said, ‘I can’t make – I can’t make a better picture than this.’” – Brian De Palma

He said these words with a heavy heart while recounting a story of seeing Carlito’s Way (1993) at the Berlin Film Festival, realizing he had poured his heart and soul into a film that received mixed reviews from critics and did well but not great at the box office. The start of the 1990s had not been good to Brian De Palma with the high-profile and costly failure that was The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). It shook his filmmaking mojo so much that he second-guessed the narrative structure of Raising Cain (1992), a return to more familiar territory with the psychological thriller, which took a personal toll on the man.

He was in need of a hit to appease the studios and moved on to what he hoped would be a commercial hit by reteaming with Al Pacino in an effort to recreate the magic of Scarface (1983). If fans were expecting the same over-the-top bombast with Carlito’s Way they would be sorely disappointed as it took a more melancholic, introspective approach while still featuring De Palma’s virtuoso camerawork and masterful action set pieces, crafting a tragedy about how a criminal tries to go straight but is ultimately doomed from the get-go.

Carlito’s Way features one of the oldest chestnuts in the world. Narrating his story during the last moments of his life, Carlito Brigante (Pacino), a veteran criminal, has recently been released from prison, intent on leading a normal, law-abiding life. Of course it isn’t going to be that easy – when he returns to his old neighborhood, his reputation precedes him. Local gangster Benny Blanco from the Bronx (John Leguizamo), a cocky, up-and-comer, sets his sights on Carlito after being shamed by him in public. Carlito, however, barely notices him as he’s torn between reuniting with an old flame and a struggling Broadway dancer, Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), and keeping his lawyer and friend, David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn), out of trouble.

As a personal favor to David, Carlito runs a nightclub for the latter to raise enough money to move to the Bahamas and start his own business renting cars in a tropical paradise with Gail. However, Carlito’s loyalty to David will be his undoing – his friend has become so corrupt during the time that Carlito was in prison that he’s not only wanted by law enforcement but the mafia as well.

Carlito’s Way begins at the end (even though we don’t know it yet) with Carlito being shot and rushed to the hospital. While lying on the stretcher going through the train station, he flashes back to how he got there. De Palma lets it all play out over the opening credits, in dreamy slow motion, with somber classical music playing over it all. The entire sequence is shot in black and white save for a billboard that says, “Escape to Paradise,” with inviting tropical imagery symbolizing Carlito’s desire to escape a life of crime for a better one.

It is 1975 and Carlito has been released from prison after a five-year stint, reinvigorated and reborn. At his hearing he sticks it to the judge (a cameo by Paul Mazursky no less!) and the District Attorney (James Rebhorn) in classic Pacino style, delivering a speech like he’s accepting an Academy Award. It’s as close to Scarface as Pacino gets and, in a bit of irony, Carlito is actually sincere about going straight. Unlike Tony Montana, he doesn’t want to rise to the top of the criminal underworld – he wants to get out. He even tells both the local crime boss and David that he’s retired but they don’t believe him. An ex-con career criminal going straight? No way.

Sure enough, he gets roped into an “errand” with his young cousin (John Ortiz) that turns into a bloody shoot-out. As always, De Palma injects the film with his trademark bravura action sequences. One look at the set-up and, like Carlito, we know that something is not right. Pacino shows how his character survived for so long as he expertly sizes up the situation and takes stock of the room: how many guys and where they are in relation to each other and him. Carlito is calm, unruffled, while his eyes convey a readiness for anything.

De Palma thrives at orchestrating these kinds of set pieces, masterfully using editing to build anticipation and suspense as we wait for the inevitable explosion of violence, gradually building the tension as we feel Carlito’s apprehension. Despite his desire to go legit, he gets drawn back into a life of crime; he can’t escape.

Carlito is a role tailor-made for Al Pacino, allowing him to essay another larger-than-life character. Carlito is a smart guy who cannot escape what he is no matter how hard he tries and the actor conveys the melancholy that lurks behind the bravado of his character. For all of his street smarts, Carlito makes the fatal mistake of underestimating local small-time tough guy Benny Blanco (a perfectly cast motor-mouthed Leguizamo) who keeps trying to get an audience with the veteran crook only to be rebuffed every time.

Carlito also pines for Gail and goes up to the top of a neighboring building in the rain to watch her in a dance class. He is still in love with her and envisions being reunited with her as part of his dream of escaping a life of crime. Like James Caan’s safecracker in Thief (1981), Carlito is making up for lost time and wants to start his new life right now, but his old one won’t let him go.

The real scene-stealer, however, is Sean Penn’s sleazy, coked-up lawyer. The actor reportedly did the film to help finance his directorial debut, The Crossing Guard (1995). For a paycheck role, Penn does a great job immersing himself in the part, complete with a frizzy Afro and receding hairline. It’s as though Pacino’s presence inspired Penn to step up his game, making Penn’s memorable turn so much fun to watch. Even though David dresses in expensive clothes and smokes fancy cigarettes, he’s a cokehead that runs with a dangerous crowd who thinks he’s untouchable. His hubris is his undoing.

The rest of the cast is filled out by solid character actors like John Leguizamo, who plays Benny as a pushy little runt not to be underestimated, and the always-reliable Luis Guzman as Carlito’s right-hand man. There’s also Viggo Mortensen in a small role as a former contemporary of Carlito who has been let out of prison to get the dirt on his friend. Wheelchair-bound and wearing cheap, stained clothes, the actor isn’t afraid to portray a pathetic snitch, a shadow of his former self. He plays a sad figure that really gets under Carlito’s skin. It also shows how far the D.A. is willing to go to send him back to prison.

The only miscasting is Penelope Ann Miller as Pacino’s love interest. She looks out of place and just doesn’t have the acting chops to hold her own against Pacino. She does have a good scene with Pacino when, much to Carlito’s surprise, he discovers that Gail moonlights as a stripper to make ends meet. It is a continuation of his disillusionment in the sense that despite all of her talk of trying to make it as an actress, Gail gets naked for other men. Like Carlito, there is her dream and there is her reality. They have an interesting conversation as he awkwardly disapproves of her dancing for men, to which she unashamedly counters, “You ever kill anybody, Charlie?” Carlito realizes that he has no right to judge her as he’s done far worse for money.

Loyalty is both Carlito’s greatest attribute and vice. It is his loyalty to David that gets him in trouble with Benny Blanco and the Italian mobsters that go after in him in the film’s exciting climax. He has a personal code that he adheres to no matter what happens. However, it is the internal conflict that rages within him that ultimately clouds his judgment. It is his natural instinct to be the ruthless criminal he was versus the legit businessman he wants to be, which results in the sparing of Benny’s life when the smart play was to kill him, as he’ll be a problem later on.

Carlito knows that David is out of control and taking unnecessary risks, like ripping off a wiseguy for $1 million, but helps him break said crook out of Riker’s Prison out of friendship, a debt he feels he owes him. Ultimately, he can’t change who he is. The two men finally have it out and Carlito realizes what a true friend David is as the lawyer lays it out for him, tells him that he looks out for himself, while Carlito lives by an antiquated code. That’s all Carlito needs to hear and ends their friendship, leaving him at the mercy of a mob assassin.

New York State Supreme Court judge Edwin Torres wrote Carlito’s Way in 1975 and its sequel After Hours in 1979, both chronicling the rise and fall of Puerto Rico drug kingpin Carlito Brigante. Al Pacino came to producer Martin Bregman with these two novels and said that they could be made into a film. Screenwriter David Koepp was already working for Bregman when he was given the two novels and told to adapt them into a screenplay. He liked them but taking 800 pages and making them into a film was a daunting task. Koepp was also unfamiliar with Spanish Harlem in the 1970s. When it came to adapting the novels, he ended up using more of After Hours as it featured an older Carlito that Pacino could play.

Bregman felt that Brian De Palma was the best person to direct but he wasn’t interested in making another gangster film. At the time of making Carlito’s Way, De Palma’s personal life was in turmoil. He said, “In the space of two years, I got married; I had a child; and I got divorced!” He elaborated further: “I wasn’t able to reconcile my private life and my professional life.” Like Carlito loses Gail, De Palma lost his second wife, movie producer Gale Ann Hurd. To this end, De Palma was drawn to Koepp’s script as he recognized his own crisis in Carlito’s:

“A guy who just got assassinated and who thinks, ‘Shit, I’m dead! How did I end up here?’ And he reviews his life to understand the chain of events and to accept what has happened to him. That was my situation at the time. To make this film that conveyed what I was feeling, I had to lay myself bare.”

When De Palma called Sean Penn about Carlito’s Way he hadn’t acted in four years and needed money as his wife at the time, Robin Wright, was pregnant again. The actor said, “I certainly was interested in working with Al Pacino. And I’d had a very good relationship with Brian on Casualties of War.” When he initially talked to the director, Penn got the impression that the film was going to be very raw and his research uncovered a very gritty setting. When he arrived on the night club set during filming to find a very expensive-looking set with many extras and complex moving shots that took a long time to set up, which did not allow for multiple takes. Penn felt “a little duped. And that created tension.”

Torres gave Pacino and Penn a personal tour of the criminal justice system and Puerto Rican New York, taking them to the South Bronx, the barrio and to various clubs and bars. To prepare for the role he took Pacino to salsa clubs in Spanish Harlem. The actor said, “It was the Disney tour of the barrio: ‘So-and-so got shot here. So-and-so got shot right over there.’” According to De Palma, Pacino patterned his character’s cadences and speech patterns after Torres. The judge also arranged for Penn to watch Bruce Cutler sum up the Thomas Gambino racketeering case. The actor also talked to Albert J. Krieger who defended John Gotti. Penn looked through period articles on lawyers and came across a still photograph in Life magazine of a young law student that he based the look of David on.

There are several colorful anecdotes about the filming of Carlito’s Way. De Palma and Penn clashed over the scene in which David asks Carlito to break a mobster out of Riker’s. Penn had done ten takes with the director – happy with take three – but the actor wanted to do another 15 takes until he was happy with his performance. Incredulous, De Palma wanted to do Pacino’s side of the scene. After 25 takes, he insisted on shooting Pacino and Penn got upset as a result. Afterwards, Penn disrespectfully chewed out De Palma over the course of the rest of the day.

De Palma started filming the final chase sequence in the winter – and finished it in the middle of summer. They shot the train-to-train scene over and over again (in the blistering New York heat) with Pacino running up and down the train in a long, black leather coat and De Palma in another running parallel filming it. It was a complicated shot that took many hours. An exhausted Pacino finally had enough and took the train home at four in the morning without telling De Palma. The director recalls, his assistant director telling him, “Al took the train home. And he thinks you’re crazy. He doesn’t know what you’re doing.” When the studio first saw the pool scene they felt it was too long. De Palma interpreted that to mean it wasn’t long enough! He added more footage, setting up the action and building more suspense. Bizarrely, the studio saw the new version – and congratulated him on making it shorter.

Carlito’s Way received decidedly mixed reviews from critics. In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Carlito’s Way is best watched as lively, colorful posturing and as a fine demonstration of this director’s bravura visual style.” Rolling Stone magazine’s Peter Travers gave it four stars and wrote, “The drug wars have raised brutality and betrayal to levels we see reflected on Pacino’s eloquently ravaged face. It’s that face that holds us even when Pacino’s ‘Rican’ accent slips into his Southern drawl from Scent of a Woman. It’s that face that cuts through De Palma’s erratic pacing and derivative shootouts.”

There were critics who wrote decidedly negative words about the film. Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman gave it a “B” rating and wrote, “Watching Carlito’s Way, I never really believed that a heroin dealer and coolly pragmatic killer could be such a simple, romantic guy.” In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, “De Palma’s direction is alert but dispirited, and certainly for us there is a sense of drudgery in having to observe this gifted filmmaker run through his tired bag of tricks.” Finally, the Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turan criticized Miller’s character: “Miller works hard to make the part believable, but finally the role fits too snugly into the traditional ‘exotic dancer with a heart of gold’ category to allow for much genuine impact.”

Despite the clichéd premise, Carlito’s Way works well because of the caliber of actors, David Koepp’s screenplay with memorable dialogue (“You think you’re big time?! You’re gonna fucking die big time!”), and De Palma’s stylish direction. The last 20 minutes plays out in an exciting chase as the director pulls out all the stops, like the impressively choreographed tracking shot, as Carlito tries to evade mobsters and make it in time to meet Gail at the train station; he is literally racing for his life. What makes the film’s ending so heartbreaking is that Carlito got so close to realizing his dream only for it to be cruelly ripped away at the last minute by someone he could’ve dealt with earlier on but chose not to, and therefore pays for this lapse in judgment dearly.

While De Palma did not originate this project, he certainly made it his own. He found something in Koepp’s script that he connected with on a personal level and transformed what could have easily been a paycheck gig into an artistic expression for what he was going through in his own life. This might explain why he seems crestfallen in the De Palma documentary when recounting watching Carlito’s Way at the Berlin Film Festival years ago. The film was a personal expression and its mixed critical reaction and decent but unremarkable box office was likely a bitter pill for De Palma to swallow at the time. His desire to stay in the game and enjoy the resources that a major studio could provide, coupled with his hunger for a commercial hit, drove him to team-up with Tom Cruise and direct the first movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which allowed him to fulfill this goal.

Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “Carlito’s Way, like Scarface, is first and last a character study, a portrait of a man who wants to be better than he is.” Much like Carlito, De Palma was also struggling to become a better man in his own life, not wanting to look back. Unlike, his cinematic alter ego, the director overcame his personal demons and triumphed in the end, thereby proving that he was able become a better filmmaker than he had been before, delivering a powerful, personal film that stands as one of the strongest efforts in his filmography.

SOURCES

De Palma. Dir. Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow. Empire Ward Pictures. 2015.

Feeney, Sheila Anne. “So New York…Yet So Hollywood.” Los Angeles Times. November 4, 1993.

Grimes, William. “His Honor Himself is Counselor to Pacino.” The New York Times. July 27, 1993.

Keesey, Douglas. Brian De Palma’s Split-Screen: A Life in Film. University Press of Mississippi. 2015.

Kelly, Richard T. Sean Penn: His Life and Times. Canongate U.S. 2004.

“The Making of Carlito’s Way.” Carlito’s Way Blu-Ray. Universal Pictures. 2010.

Night Falls on Manhattan

In a prolific and diverse career, some of Sidney Lumet’s best films dealt with police corruption. It was a theme that the filmmaker was drawn to as far back as the 1970s with Serpico (1973) and would revisit regularly in the 1980s with Prince of the City (1981) and the 1990s with Q & A (1990). It was towards the end of the latter decade that he made Night Falls on Manhattan (1997), an adaptation of Robert Daley’s novel Tainted Evidence about a newly elected district attorney’s attempt to battle corruption within the New York Police Department. The film wasn’t given a particularly wide release and performed modestly at the box office with mixed reviews. Perhaps it was felt that Lumet’s film was nothing more than an expensive, feature-length episode of Law and Order, which is unfortunately because it delves into the personal and professional dilemmas of its characters in a much deeper way than that television show.

The film starts off by shedding light on the little-shown process of how someone becomes an assistant district attorney by following Sean Casey (Andy Garcia) as he pays his dues by working all kinds of cases in big and small court rooms with long hours that take their toll on his personal life – all in a wonderfully economic montage that is vintage Lumet as he succinctly gives us the information we need to know about the job.

When a heavily armed drug dealer (an imposing Shiek Mahmud-Bey) kills two cops, seriously wounds a police detective (Ian Holm), and escapes in a cop car, the fiery district attorney Morgenstern (Ron Leibman) takes a personal interest in Sean as his father was the detective that was critically wounded and wants Sean to prosecute the drug dealer. The scene where Morgenstern pitches the case to Sean is a joy to watch as veteran character actor Ron Leibman works the room with his larger than life character.

Morgenstern tells Sean that it’s a simple case and he’ll have the jury’s sympathy because of his father. After Sean leaves, the understandably upset senior A.D.A. Elihu Harrison (Colm Feore) tears into his boss for choosing the younger man over him and tells him the real reason he picked Sean over him – it’s all about politics because he knows that when he’s up for re-election he’ll be going up against Harrison. The scene provides fascinating insight into backroom politics – something that Lumet excels at doing. The D.A. is a shrewd man and knows that by giving the case to Sean he’s going to be personally motivated to do everything he can to put the drug dealer away.

In an intriguing twist, flashy defense attorney Sam Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss) agrees to take on the drug dealer’s case under the auspices that it was self-defense as the police where trying to murder him. To make matters worse, Morgenstern bungles the arrest of the drug dealer and it plays out embarrassingly in front of the press on T.V. The court case plays out as you would expect, but the film really gets interesting when it explores what happens afterwards.

For fans of courtroom dramas, Night Falls on Manhattan is pure cinematic catnip as we get to see Andy Garcia and Richard Dreyfuss go at it as they each try to appeal to the jury with every skill at their disposal. These kinds of films give actors the opportunity to show off their chops as they often have intense exchanges with fellow actors playing witnesses they question while also delivering lengthy speeches.

Andy Garcia is excellent as an up-and-coming assistant district attorney that he wisely doesn’t play as naïve or earnest but rather inexperienced. Fortunately, he’s a quick learner and climbs up the ladder, finding all kinds of corruption along the way to becoming district attorney. Sean sincerely believes in law and order and that no one is above the law – cops or crooks. Naturally, this is put to the test over the course of the film. It’s great to see Garcia mixing it up with veteran actors like Ian Holm and Ron Leibman in scenes that bring out the best in all involved.

Richard Dreyfuss delivers an outstanding performance as a former 1960s radical cum slick defense lawyer who has an incredible scene with Garcia where Vigoda cuts through the posturing on display in the courtroom and reveals that he took the no-win case of the drug dealer in the hopes of uncovering police corruption and redeem the death of his 15-year-old daughter who overdosed. It’s an emotionally charged scene where Dreyfuss brilliantly underplays his character’s touching vulnerability.

Leibman is also a notable standout in the cast as the blustery D.A. but over the course of the film he loses that bluster and confides in Sean, giving him sage advice about what he’s in store for: “Everybody’s gonna want a piece of you now that you’re elected.” His young protégé asks him if he’s going to have make one big deal to which his mentor replies, “Hundred little deals, a thousand. Deal after deal after deal after deal.” It’s a riveting scene as the former D.A. tells Sean how it is and Leibman nails it, losing none of the intensity of his earlier scenes even though he’s become something of a tragic figure.

Night Falls on Manhattan examines why cops go on the take and it is not as simple as they want to make money. It often runs deeper than that and this is one of the hallmarks of Lumet’s police corruption films. He is fascinated with how the justice system works and examines its inner workings in a way that few other filmmakers have done. He presents the justice system as a complex mechanism with many working parts. His films dramatize what happens when one of these parts malfunctions. It is never easy to fix. All of his films don’t offer easy answers because real life is like that. The protagonists in these films have to make tough choices that have serious ramifications and then they have to live with them.

Sidney Lumet was coming off back-to-back commercial misfires with A Stranger Among Us (1992) Guilty as Sin (1993) and Night Falls on Manhattan was seen as the director returning to familiar turf. The film was inspired by the infamous 1986 shoot-out between the police and big-time drug dealer Larry Davis who killed several cops in a bust gone wrong. It was based partly on the Robert Daley novel Tainted Evidence, although, according to Lumet, only the beginning of the film up to the trial came from the book, the rest was original. The filmmaker was drawn to the idea that the film’s protagonist “doesn’t pursue anything, it pursues him. And slowly the world that he’s living keeps closing in, and closing in with a complexity he never thought possible.”

Night Falls on Manhattan received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “Night Falls on Manhattan is absorbing precisely because we cannot guess who is telling the truth, or what morality some of the characters possess.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kevin Thomas wrote, “The great thing about Lumet is that he is not cynical but instead finds an amusing irony in exploring the art of the possible, in discovering that point at which decent people in positions of power and responsibility can be capable of working together privately, of looking the other way if necessary, for the greater good of all concerned.” Finally, the Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “The plot is such a warhorse that Lumet…feels he has to explain why he’s filming it in a letter to the press: ‘Why am I back at the same old stand: cops, corruption, culpability? Because the problem won’t go away. In fact, it’s getting worse.’”

In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, “Mr. Lumet’s screenplay does a good job of articulating the disillusioning realities of careerism and crime. And he has an ear, as ever, for the disparate voices of the city. But Night Falls on Manhattan is also oddly listless. It doesn’t often live up to the doomy eloquence of its title.” The Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter wrote, “That said, what must be added is that, disappointingly, Night Falls on Manhattan doesn’t quite add up. Dreyfuss is great, Holm is great, Mahmud-Bey is great, Leibman is great, but Garcia is so mopey and conflicted he becomes ultimately tiresome.”

Night Falls on Manhattan ends as it began – with a new crop of fresh-faced assistant district attorneys only this time Sean talks to them and it’s his turn to impart sage advice as he tells them:

“You’re going to spend most of your time in the grey areas. But out there that’s where you’re going to come face to face with who you really are and that’s a frightening thing to ask of you. And it might take a lifetime to figure out.”

Sean is a different man then who we met at the beginning of the film. He still believes in the law but its tempered by what he’s experienced. It may have shaken his resolve but it hasn’t broken it. Not yet.

SOURCES

Callahan, Maureen. “A Streetwise Legend Sticks to His Guns.” New York Magazine. May 26, 1997.

Simon, Alex and Terry Keefe. “Remembering Sidney Lumet.” Hollywood Interview. April 1, 2015.