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Reviews
The Rookie (1959)
Martin & Lewis it is not
The Rookie suffers from so much. There are the random musical songs interspersed through the movie, the long pointless script and enough grating slapstick to make Jerry Lewis blush. Noonan and Leavitt just don't know when to quit. It takes a full hour before the story finally gets to the main plot and the characters are shipwrecked. Then the guys start playing Japanese sailors with the standard racist caricature of the day. It is a shame the funniest parts of the movie are when Noonan and Leavitt are playing the stupid, stereotyped Japanese guys. But, it gets pretty tiring after switching back and forth between two sets of characters. Then it just abruptly ends. Even a naked Julie Newmar in a towel can't save this one.
There is really little charm in the movie and it is over a half hour too long. The story just flounders along trying to set up funny situations and failing. Stick to Martin & Lewis. At least Deano had charm and Jerry had that animated face.
Heavy Load (2008)
He's not heavy, he's my bandmate.
Rothwell follows a happy punk band (Heavy Load), with three special needs members and their slow rise from playing for other special needs crowds to playing large festivals and recording a single.
Suddenly, the band is facing the problems every group seems to face when they begin to get exposure. The drummer hates their new music, the bassist moves away and they deal with the reality of traveling and performing with members who have special needs. Only after a half hour does the film really start to become something; as it follows the men's new lives and documents their every day struggles. The film and its influence on the band is changing them all, for better or worse. The men are given opportunities few people in their position could even dream of, but they are unable to deal with change.
The band members with disabilities yearn for an ideal world and often seem disappointed in their new lives, despite their new found fame. The happy band that Rothwell attached himself to slowly deteriorates.
But, like any good band story, Heavy Load eventually overcome their problems, recording a single and start a campaign to help other special needs people. They overcome the pressure to find their rhythm, realize their love for the band and "stay up late" to rock.
A Very British Gangster (2007)
Less About Gangsters than the Gritty Reality of Poor Manchester.
Overly long and without much unifying message, A Very British Gangster will surely leave many scratching their heads. Americans usually have a entirely different view of what a "British Gangster" would be. These guys seem to be minor characters in a Guy Ritchie movie. Rather than wearing three piece suits and driving expensive cars, the Noonan family make their living exploiting the down trodden members of Manchester in their cheap clothes and fake gold jewelry.
We really don't get to see the true underbelly of what life is like as a gangster in Manchester. The gang spends its time posing on street corners, making idle threats and generally looking like a bunch of kids trying to emulate the real deal. But we do get a sense that there is much more below the surface. We never meet the real gangsters we expect to find but they seem to lurk in the corners the film doesn't explore. The Noonans seem to be putting on a show for the cameras, allowing only their teenage goons to be on camera and their operations limited to settling disputes between the locals. Dominic claims to have stolen millions of dollars, but the whole gang is still stuck in near poverty, living in small flats and proud of their meager possessions.
This movie is less a study on a British crime boss and more a look at the gritty reality of the poor urban centers of Britain. Places where small time crooks can still make money on petty crimes and instilling fear in the local community. The Noonans are playing a game that is getting increasingly harder to win at. Many of the kids have dreams to do something different with their lives. One wants to be an actor, another a singer, another just to escape Manchester. Unfortunately, the sad truth is most of the gang, including Noonan's son and God Son, are spiraling down the gutter without any hope or guidance that could help them become anything more than small times thieves; destined to spend most of their adult lives behind bars.
Brooklyn Rules (2007)
All the scraps left over on the mob movie floor
For a movie with so much character focus it's surprising that none of the characters come off the screen (except for Alec Baldwin.) Nor do we care about any of them. The decent moments of this movie try to tug at our hearts, but we don't care because its a tired story with little substance.
Freddie Prinze Jr. (Michael) is your average troubled Italian kid cum mob boss in the making. Er... wait. No he's not. That's what the movie we wanted would have presented. The movie starts with a long monologue explaining how growing up in Brooklyn has forced Michael to play by a new set of rules (hence the name). The problem is there's 2 moments in the movie were he even grasps at being a tough guy. In reality he's a quiet college boy who's worst faux pas is cheating on a test in school. What a rebel playing by his own set of rules. Oh wait, that was James Dean.
Micheal lives in a world surrounded by wise guys yet he spends the length of the film shunning the world he lives in. Struggling to get out of Brooklyn and away from his stupid friends and the wise guys around the corner. How captivating! Not. Freddie is possibly the worst person to make into a Brooklyn hood. He looks like he popped out of a J. Crew catalog, not from Tony Soprano's Escalade.
The action is slow. Which isn't surprising from Terence Winter. It was one of the problems with the Sopranos. At least The Sopranos had good dialog and great actors who absolutely played their parts to perfection. The Sopranos also had good story lines. This movie has none of that.
Alec Baldwin is good as always (the little we see him), but his character has little point to the story other than to be the "mob" presence in most of the story line. Baldwin's character seems to represent everything in the movie that we didn't get. The only great parts of this movie have Baldwin doing his best to make something out of nothing and we get very little of that.
When the pivotal action finally turns up (and we're begging for it) the movie seems it may become what we wanted it to be. Yet it still just doesn't pay off. It's recycled. We get a few scenes with Alec Baldwin doing the things we want a mob movie to do. Then we're forced to watch the main characters sit around and talk about it. The plot line runs without humps or spikes. There's no build or climax. The movie ends on the same level it started.
We've seen this all before, and much better in A Bronx Tale, Goodfellas and pretty much every other coming of age mob story. Calling this a mob movie is kind. All mob references are seen from afar. We only catch whispers, see wise guys across a room and a great true-life mob storyline being played out and discarded on the TV. This is as much a mob movie as Python's "Holy Grail" was a movie about religion.
The main problem with this movie is it can't decide what to focus on. There's no real plot. The mob aspect of the film tags along in the background and teases us with some good "Bada Bing" fun that never arrives. Is it a mob movie? A coming of age story? A love story? Who knows because it never grabs one story and holds on to make it worth it. There are no defining moments. There are no moments that explore character. We're left with a tangling mess that seems to have been put together from the "Mob Movie" cutting room floor.