Yeah, closing in on over 30 years and here I am writing a review...oh well.
There is nothing about this film, aside from style, that one can completely follow. Style and dance and dance and music and more style. In between we have Richard Gere as Michael "Dixie" Dwyer, a coronet player who gets roped into Dutch "The Dutchman" Schultz's (James Remar) gangster world.
What's to love about this movie?
BRILLIANT cinematography by Stephen Goldblatt. INCREDIBLE set design.
As most have written, that's about it.
The script is horrid. The direction by Francis Ford Coppola...decent. And he woefully casts his nephew Nick Cage here as Dixie's hothead ambitious, yet stupid brother. I will never understand the ironic love for this guy. People like him because he does crazy movies making the dumbest choices in cinema (see: "Peggy Sue Got Married"). People call him brave for it. Brave is the guy who paid to let him do crazy stuff.
Any way, a lot of darkness in the making of this film as well. Cocaine cowboys was big in the 1980's and in what became truth being stranger than fiction, a real murder was associated with this movie and with flamboyant producer Robert Evans. These are the original stories of Hollywood...they want to forget and bury. This is when it was fun. Regardless, this movie does have good musical numbers (Gregory Hines tap dancing is annoying. We get it, he's good...at a certain point, the tapping felt like hammering as he's hamming it up. Never got Greg Hines either). The best parts are when people are still. I mean, this is Coppola so the whole thing feels like a theatrical opera. It just never had a story.
Any way, a lot of darkness in the making of this film as well. Cocaine cowboys was big in the 1980's and in what became truth being stranger than fiction, a real murder was associated with this movie and with flamboyant producer Robert Evans. These are the original stories of Hollywood...they want to forget and bury. This is when it was fun. Regardless, this movie does have good musical numbers (Gregory Hines tap dancing is annoying. We get it, he's good...at a certain point, the tapping felt like hammering as he's hamming it up. Never got Greg Hines either). The best parts are when people are still. I mean, this is Coppola so the whole thing feels like a theatrical opera. It just never had a story.