Richard sits in with Todd van der Hayden to have a look at “Don’t Breathe,” a new edge-of-your-seat home invasion flick, the romantic “Southside with You,” the noirish “Manhattan Night” and Natalie Portman’s directorial debut “A Tale of Love and Darkness.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
There was a time when pulpy New York noirs were a popular genre. Claustrophobic and edgy, movies like “Scarlet Street,” “The Dark Corner” and “The Naked City” exposed the Big Apple’s dirty urban underbelly in gritty and entertaining ways. It’s been sometime since we’ve taken a cinematic walk on NYC’s wild side, so a 50’s style noir placed on present day Manhattan streets should be a welcome thing, right? “Manhattan Night” is a based on author Colin Harrison’s award winning New York Times Notable Book of the Year “Manhattan Nocturne.”
“I sell fear, scandal and mayhem,” says investigative reporter Porter Wren (Adrien Brody). “I sell newspapers. With three deadlines a week, I’m always looking for a good story.” It is that search that leads him to Caroline Crowley (Yvonne Strahovski), a femme fatale with a murdered husband (Campbell Scott) and a favour to ask. She uses her seductive powers to convince him to use his skill to find out who offed her husband. Smelling a good story, Wren becomes infatuated with her and investigates the case placing his marriage and life in danger.
Director Brian DeCubellis certainly knows his way around the genre. “Manhattan Night” is ripe with blackmail, danger, moral ambiguity, slick city streets and abuses of power. It hits all the right notes but seems slightly out of tune, like a cover version of a popular song that doesn’t quite capture the magic of the original.
Brody is suitably world-weary and Strahovski is mysterious and dangerously seductive. Both are stereotypes that feel airlifted in from another, better, movie. As far as the baddies go, Scott nails it as the troubled and threatening husband, a man who projects his neurosis on everyone around him. He’s over the top, chewing the scenery to such an extent you fear he might actually gnaw through the screen, but at least he’s captures the eye. Ditto Steven Berkoff as a Murdoch-esque media baron who seems to exists to add an unsavoury element to an already grubby affair.
As “Manhattan Night” slowly winds its way toward its anti-climatic final scenes it becomes clear that no amount of stylish direction or outrageous characters can make up for the far-fetched and convoluted story.
By Richard Crouse – In Focus – Metro Canada
“You’re a con artist,” wrote Karina Halle in Sins & Needles. “A liar. A thief. An unredeemable soul.”
She might also have added to that colourful list really interesting movie character.
As despicable as flim flam artists may be, there is no denying they make good film subjects.
This weekend in American Hustle, Christian Bale plays Irving Rosenfeld, a con man forced to help the FBI ensnare a group of corrupt politicians in the ABSCAM sting operation.
Although American Hustle director David O. Russell says his film is a fictionalized account of events, the ABSCAM operation was headline news in the early 1980s and Hollywood took notice.
In 1982 director Louis Malle was making plans for a May start date on an ABSCAM film called Moon Over Miami starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Belushi was to play Melvin Weinberg, based on the same man as Bale’s character in American Hustle.
The movie was scuttled following Belushi’s death in March of that year.
That con man film never saw the light of day, but many others have.
Everyone knows The Sting and The Grifters, but lesser seen is David Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner, a complicated story starring Campbell Scott as Joe Ross, a man who invents a process “to control the world market.” Concerned that he will not be properly compensated for his work he contacts Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin), a wealthy businessman who offers to help. Little does Ross know that he has just stepped into a world of deception that will change his life.
Steve Martin’s performance in The Spanish Prisoner was Oscar worthy, but it wasn’t the first time he played a confidence man on film.
In the comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels he starred opposite Michael Caine as a scruffy con man trying to muscle in on some high end business on the French Riviera. Caine’s suave grifter makes a bet with Martin. Whoever can con Soap Queen Janet Colgate (Glenne Headley) first will walk away with $50,000.
The movie was written for Mick Jagger and David Bowie who were looking to do a project together after the success of their Dancing in the Street video. The rock stars dropped out before cameras rolled — Bowie later said both were, “a bit tweezed that we lost out on a script that could have been reasonably good” — and replaced by Martin and Caine whose hilarious performances earned the movie a spot on Bravo’s 100 Funniest Movies list.
