1989美国喜剧·动作冒险
Wickedly funny and observant slice of life NYC gangster pic, that's decidedly Jewish, quirky and anarchistic. The surprise cult comedy/drama hit was shot in 1969 and put on the shelf when no distributor was willing to take a chance on it when test audiences didn't laugh, but it was released in 1989 to play in the NYC Film Festival. Rave reviews gave this pic a new lease on life, and it got its long awaited theatrical release--only twenty years too late to help the splendid aging unknown cast advance their careers.
In this low-budget black and white shot indie, writer-director Michael Roemer ("Nothing But A Man") makes good use of location shots in the Big Apple, exhibits a winsome dead-on droll humor and gets a super performance from Max Priest--the washed-up small-time mob leader with a deadpan expression (perhaps equaling Buster Keaton's) that seemingly can absorb all kinds of bad news without letting on he's in pain. It's like a time capsule pic, as it takes us back to the 1960s when mafioso types were riding around the city in big gas-guzzling Cadillacs, stylish dames were sporting bee-hive hairstyles, Go-Go dancers were in vogue and there was liberal John Lindsay's racially changing NYC that altered forever the way urban America was to be from now on.
It's a scream as a cutting satire on middle-class Jewish aspirations, their showy bar mitzvah rituals and of the almost tragic downfall of a two-bit gangster who didn't have the heart for the rough business, just the will to lead a soft life. The cinéma-vérité pic looks authentic even if it's covering familiar territory, and has the balls to make such an unsympathetic low-life criminal as Harry as an almost sympathetic heroic one by the end of the day.