Small Time Crooks

The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) - Rosenberg

Charlie (Mickey Rourke), a divorced working stiff with style who lives with a beautiful dancer/aerobics instructor girlfriend Diane (Daryl Hannah), wants to get by by earning an honest living as a maitre-d. Money's tight for Charlie - he still has to pay for child support and Diane just declared she is pregnant and it's his cousin Paulie (Eric Roberts) who can't stay out of trouble and always drag Charlie with him down the hole. When one of the Paulie's scam- stealing the police payoff to a local mob boss, Bed Bug Eddie (Burt Young) goes awry (a cop falls to his death while they are cracking the safe), it's not only Bed Bug and his goons after them, but also NYPD.

The Pope not only features great performances by Rourke and Roberts, it's also peppered in with great bit characters - Geraldine Page (The Day of the Locusts, Interiors) as lower class, chain-smoking widow of a dead cop, Kenneth McMillan (Dune) as a good natured clockmaker-cum-safecracker.

It's a typical small time crooks story - one trying to go straight, the other digging an early grave and loyalty through thick and thin (we Italians stick together!) kinda thang. But Rosenberg gets everything right in painting the scummy 80s village in NY dominated by Italian mobs and give each scene plenty of breathing room whether it figures much in to the main storyline or not. There are many great scenes, like when Paulie pours in laxatives to an asshole traffic cop's drink and jumping up at down and screaming, pointing at the distressed cop. "The cop shat his pants! the cop shat his pants!" and Charlie dancing with Diane in the street- Charlie asks a kid with a boombox to turn the volume up and the kid goes, "Sure thing Charlie." I love these moments! Their gumbah world might not be your cup of tea but Rosenberg and co, keep you engaged throughout the entire 2 hour movie.

Class War

Heaven's Gate (1980) - Cimino







Here is the basic plot: James (Kris Kristofferson), a Havard graduate law man, joins the frontiers of Wyoming in 1890 as a hired sheriff in the town of Casper, Johnson County. He goes head to head with the Cattle Rancher's Association, the Freemason like, all powerful group, comprised of the New England elites poised to stop the flood immigrants (mostly Eastern European hodge-podge) moving in to the New Territory. They put out an illegal warrant to kill 125 'thieves and anarchists' among these relative newcomers. James is involved with the French madam of the whore house, Ella (Isabelle Huppert), but her heart belongs to working class muscleman hired by the Association, Nate (Christopher Walken). The assault/massacre of Johnson county is impending.

With the majestic Wyoming backdrop (lensed by Vilmos Zsigmond), Cimino tries to paint the ruthless frontier Americana with bold strokes that back then wasn't much different than today. It's an ambitious project, taking on the grand theme of class warfare: the rich aggressively persecuting the poor with violence, in not sharing that piece of American pie. It's a pleasure to see something this epic, with thousands of extras and cast that includes, Kristofferson, Huppert, Walken, Jeff Bridges, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif and Mickey Rourke. But despite all the beautiful visual poetry, the film lacks a narrative pull, mainly because of its unhurried pacing and lack of urgency. It contains perhaps the most lackluster large scale stagecoach-style gun battles even though body count aplenty.

I haven't come across Huppert being this beautiful and magnetic in any other films yet. Playing a woman in love with two men of the opposite spectrum, she is completely arresting whenever she's on screen. Walken is brilliant as always, as a cold, vulnerable, tragic anti-hero. Kristofferson's James, born into privilege, not fitting anywhere, gets away with snarls like- (to Ella) "This is mo yer country than mine!" and falls victim of criticism, "You know what I hate about you James? Even though you are rich, you pretend to be poor." It's his false Eastwoodian sense of righteousness that irritates me as a character.

But Heaven's Gate is from James's point of view: it starts out with extravagant graduation ceremony at Havard, with Billy (John Hurt), a wisecracking valedictorian making jabs at the establishment. The sequence is full of whimsy, excess and unfiltered hope, for they are the future leaders of the still burgeoning country full of possibilities. In the film's end, James reflects on his experiences of the wild west, thinking about all the bloodshed that built this country, on his yacht off Rhode Island. This is how it is- that in America, no one can't escape the position they are born into. Oh, throughout a 3 1/2 hr duration, you really want to shoot Sam Waterston in the face 15 times! He is that evil in this film.

I Have Found What I'm Looking For

Eureka (1983) - Roeg
What a weird film. It starts out with a bang literally, then comfortably slips into a melodrama peppered with fate, chance, mysticism, true love and discovering oneself. Jack McCann (Gene Hackman) hits the jackpot in Alaskan gold rush in 1925. He became filthy rich and now lives on some Caribbean island. His daughter Tracy (Theresa Russell) is madly in love with beguiling, yet sinister Claude (Rutger Hauer in his prime beauty). It's the gold and wealth that puts rift on McCann's relationship with the world- his family and others alike. McCann and Claude don't see each other eye to eye. Daddy's a little more than possessive. Then there is Miami businessmen (Joe Pesci and Mickey Rourke) trying to buy McCann's island and build a casino. They won't take no for an answer. They will take it with force if necessary.

All this is told in true Roeg fashion- crazy zoom-ins, expressive editing, dizzing set pieces: all in the first 20 minutes (visually, the rest of the film doesn't hold the candle to its strong beginning). Even though it's messy as hell, it retains that organic Roeg quality- beautiful, ugly, sensual, abrupt, violent....

The eclectic mix of actors in Eureka can be distracting. I guess John Malkovitch and Christopher Walken weren't available for the roles. Hauer resembles David Bowie in Roeg's Man Who Fell to Earth. Obviously he is an actor with limited range, but here has the most complex role in his career as a vain man who floats through life without searching for anything. Russell always strikes me as an odd duck and no exception here as the millionaire's daughter, but personally I like her working class delivery and her edginess. Hackman is all volatility and cockiness as always.

One can easily draw a comparison between this and There Will Be Blood. But where Daniel Plainview is merely a one dimensional insatiable greed personified, McCann's pathos runs deeper. The film is a spiritual one. McCann sums up the film nicely when he says, "Yesterday I had it all. But today, I just have everything." In essence, McCann's journey to find that 'Eureka' moment in one's life ends in the beginning 10-15 minutes of the film. The rest is 'now what?' But like all Roeg films, it's an interesting one.