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City By The Sea - 9/6/02 - R - 108m
Robert De Niro
Frances McDormand
James Franco
Director: Michael Caton-Jones
JEF
First off, I'm a fan of Robert De Niro, and Frances McDormand. But these
two actors were not enough to carry this picture. Granted they did a good
job in their performances, but it was not enough to save this movie from
a slow moving, drawn out plot. The storyline was even interesting, but
It was just not executed well.
Vincent Lamarca (DeNiro), plays a NYC cop, who's father was executed when
he was only 8 years old. As a child he was "adopted" by a police
officer, which led to Vincent's becoming a police officer. His family
went through a nasty divorce and resulted in Vincent walking out on his
wife and young son. His son, at some point (apparently after high school)
turns to drugs, and has become a homeless junkie. Through a drug deal
gone bad he also commits murder. The rest of the movie is about Vincent's
struggle to help his son.
The movie jumps all around, trying to show how the son's becoming a junkie,
is partly the fault of the father who left his son. We're constantly shown
images of the delapidated buildings of the once booming sea town. We're
shown these images too much! We get it... the town is in bad shape. Let's
get back to the story already.
The nicknames of the drug dealers are so cliché... Snake, Spider,
Johnny Nova who gets his name from driving a Chevy Nova car.
Personally I think a much better movie would have been about the fall
of the city. How did a town that was once a major Jersey shore resort,
become this modern day ghost town? (It was supposed to be a city in NY,
but it was obviously Asbury Park, NJ).
Pass this movie by. It's not worth the $8 admission, and only if your
a fan of De Niro's would you want to rent this movie, and you'll probably
watch it in fast forward.
Jef