City by the Sea

9/6/02 - Review

Well, I was a little disappointed with this movie.  The trailer for it made it look pretty cool, but it wasn't.  Before I begin, I guess I should give some background of this movie.  The movie starts as Joey Lamarca, aka Joey Nova (James Franco) and his friend go to buy some drugs from a dealer named Picasso.  Needless to say the deal goes south and Joey kills him with a knife.  They stash the body in the river but it turns up off the shore.  Vincent Lamarca (Robert Deniro) plays a divorced cop who is also the father of Joey, even though they haven't seen each other for 14 years.  Anyway, Vincent gets the case and throughout the movie they investigate the death.  They eventually discover that the killer is Joey.  Vincent is in a troubled situation because the same happened to his father back in the 1950's.  He was convicted as a child murderer.   The media makes it seem that the Lamarca family are all murderers. As they track Joey down, a cop gets shot and Joey is the prime suspect.  I don't want to give out the rest of movie in case someone out there wants to see it, well maybe.  Frances McDormand costars as the love interest of Robert Deniro.  Michael Caton-Jones, who helmed 'The Jackal', filmed this picture. 

As far as the movie goes, it was slow in the beginning, and it seemed that it only got slower as the movie went on.  I kept asking my friend for the time so I can finally get out of the theater.  Don't get me wrong, Robert Deniro is an awesome actor.  He definitely does not get enough credit.  But his acting, nor the rest of the cast, could make this movie interesting.  It had a few moments of entertainment, but they washed away with the next scene.  I would say the highlight was the 'Analyze That' trailer, but that is a subject for another time.  If you do see the movie, check out the red light they run through.  It looks like a movie mistake to me. 

Overall Grade