A review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Directed by Michael Caton-Jones; written by Ken Hixon, based on a 1997 Esquire magazine article, ”Mark of a Murderer,” by Michael McAlary; director of photography, Karl Walter Lindenlaub; edited by Jim Clark; music by John Murphy; production designer, Jane Musky; produced by Brad Grey, Elie Samaha, Mr. Caton-Jones and Matthew Baer; released by Warner Brothers. Running time: 108 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Robert De Niro (Vincent LaMarca), Frances McDormand (Michelle), James Franco (Joey), Eliza Dushku (Gina), William Forsythe (Spyder), Anson Mount (Dave) and Patti LuPone (Maggie).
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When the preview for City by the Sea ran, you could hear the eyes in the theatre rolling. A cop… on the case of a cold blooded killer… only to find that all the clues lead to… HIS SON! Whatever will he do? Will he do his duty and bring the boy in? Or will he give up his badge and play the part of the trusting father? Oh brother. How many times has this happened on NYPD Blue and its dozens of clones?
Believe it or not, that is the premise for the film. And believe it or not, Michael Caton-Jones turns it into an impressively strong drama about family responsibility. Like he did with his masterful Rob Roy, he takes characters that we expect to be one-dimensional and makes them real, believable, facing believably complex problems that don’t necessarily have solutions. If the script hadn’t succumbed to sentimentality in the final moments, it could have been a lasting and significant work.
The key word: restraint. The music is minimal rather than manipulative. The cinematography is effective and moody without drawing attention to itself. The camera is there to serve the actors, who are more than worthy of our attention.
Robert DeNiro plays Vincent LaMarca, a cop haunted by memories of his father who was executed for violent crimes. Now an acclaimed investigator, LaMarca is on the case of a murdered junkie. It’s no spoiler to tell you that the prime suspect is his son Joey. That’s in all the previews. But the previews only hinted at what this discovery does to LaMarca. This is not another high-action cop thriller. It’s a drama about broken families. The summertime audience that packed the house for this sneak preview was clearly disappointed; they were restless, eager for explosions and gunplay. Nope. This is a story of error, regret, conscience, and responsibility.
DeNiro, who has been turning in what seems like a movie a month, gives his first real, three-dimensional performance since… gosh… when? Sure, he falls into many of his all-too-familiar ‘Are you out of your mind?’ arguments. But he and McDormand have some surprising chemistry. I enjoyed their quiet, human interaction so much that I was disappointed when we went back to the more urgent plotline. McDormand shows that yet again she can do wonders with a small role, and she draws out a softer side of DeNiro that I haven’t seen before. Caton-Jones must know how to direct him… they worked together in the impressive This Boy’s Life.
This Boy’s Life introduced the average moviegoer to Leonardo DiCaprio. City by the Sea is too late to introduce us to James Franco-Spider-man did that earlier this year. But it does show us that Franco is capable of much more than the webbed-wonder’s flick suggested. As a junkie-on-the-run, he gives the character a broken heart and a convincing bitterness towards the parents who abandoned him. One drawback: As Jude Law proved in Road to Perdition, there are some actors who will look like male models no matter how badly you beat them up.
Another pleasant surprise: Eliza Dushku of Buffy fame gives a memorable performance as Joey’s troubled girlfriend. It reminded me of Ashley Judd’s jarring-but-brief junkie in Smoke. She may have a serious big screen future after this.
Franco and Dushku make us believe that they live on the street, dodging cops, scrounging for spare change. Their associates, however, look like leftover prime-time villains, with ludicrous nicknames like “Spider” and “Snake.”
City is “based on a true story”, but as we all well know, that doesn’t mean a thing. (When you’ve seen the film, go here to find out just how little of the truth remains onscreen.) The movie is so far from the true story that many of its main characters are completely fictional, as are the marital status, crimes in question, and vocations of its central characters.
[Side note: Still, I think it's a more honorable effort than A Beautiful Mind, which invented fictional details to give the film more sentimental appeal and audience impact. Ron Howard's film was a crock, with an ending that was far from the "true story," putting easy answers and happy endings where they did not actually occur. City by the Sea, on the other hand, does not gloss over life's harsh realities. It shows us the messiness, the wages of sin, and its vision of redemption avoids cheesy slogans and easy answers.]
Why is it called City by the Sea? Well, it’s an okay metaphor for the LaMarca family. Once, Long Beach was a bright, bustling, appealing recreation spot; now, as LaMarca says as he looks out the car window searching for his son, “It looks like the Serbian army came through.” Likewise, LaMarca’s broken family is an irreparable shell. The younger LaMarca tries to hold onto hope that someday he’ll be able to return to Key West, where his family spent one happy vacation. These geographical reference points highlight the film’s central question: Can broken things be put back together? Is there any way to break the cycle of the sins of the fathers being passed on to their sons? Are we doomed to follow a path in life that has been determined for us? Like Minority Report, City by the Sea culminates with a desperate appeal to our freedom to choose.
Unfortunately, there’s almost too much drama for the film to handle. You can feel the film straining to reach an emotional climax in the final fifteen minutes. Instead, we get two big mistakes in a row.
The first mistake is one of those intelligence-insulting shots in which we circle the hero while he listens to voices in his head, voices that echo and overlap, repeating all of the important things people have said throughout the movie that lead him to this decision. Come on. Give the audience a little respect. We’ve been paying attention. We’ve noticed the questions our hero is facing.
The second mistake is a melodramatic and painfully verbose DeNiro breakdown that isn’t quite convincing. This abrupt geyser of desperate sentimental words, things that could have been easily suggested or implied by letting the actors do the work, upsets the film’s mode of subtlety and restraint. The movie quits “showing” and starts “telling.”
Still, I’m giving the film good marks. It’s far more artful and accomplished than most films in this genre. It never goes for cheap crowd-pleasing. And its final shot is graceful, leaving a lot of loose ends. Caton-Jones fades out the film showing that he clearly understands that this story is not about how all the details work out, but about one man’s heart and his slow awakening to moral responsibility.
