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City
By The Sea
Review by Alex Grant
Directed
by Michael Caton-Jones
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City
By the Sea
Cast:
Frances McDormand
Robert De Niro
James Franco
General Release USA
Sept 6th |
MICHAEL CATON-JONES CITY BY THE SEA Scots fimmaker Michael
Caton-Jones second film with Tribeca ubermensch Robert De Niro is
a companion-piece to his first 'This Boys Life'.Both deal with fathers
and sons.
Relentlessly low-key,down-beat and somber, if not sordid, 'City' is a
true-crime variation on the Biblical Story of Job and that of Abraham
and Isaac. Taken from actual events in New York and Long Beach this tortuous
family melodrama focuses upon a most unfortunate Police Lieutenant,Vincent
LaMarca.
The son of a kidnapper executed for the strangulation of an infant LaMarca
is precipitously flung into Hell when his drug-addicted son Joey [James
Franco] is sought by the police after the stabbing of a minor drug-dealer.Then
Joey appears to be the culprit in the shooting death of his own fathers
cop streetwise partner. Then the son chooses to slay the real killer of
the partner.
In the meantime Joeys common-law wife Gina abandons Victors
grandson Angelo in the care of his grandfather. A truly Biblical litany
of woe.
City is so genuinely sordid, and takes itself so very seriously,that it
swiftly tumbles into the maudlin, damaging the unstinting conviction of
the actors. De Niro personifies stoicism writ large.
A brutally naturalistic depiction of very ordinary lives, led in quiet
desperation, this gritty movie shows exactly how urban folk survive, dress,
eat and converse- it boasts a truly pellucid sense of actuality.
But a Biblical parable needs to strive for the genuinely mythical. Yet
the absolute rock-bottom realism of City prevents the filmmakers from
rising above "Just The Facts,Maam" surface verisimilitude,
at best.
Realism for its own sake can be counter-productive to art per se. Reality
is in our faces throughout the live-long day. It must be transformed by
artistry to be validates on screen.
© Alex Grant September 2002
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Apteds Enigma
Review by Alex Grant
Enigma
is the high point of Michael Apteds career
More Reviews here
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