Back & Forth #1: No Man is an Island
I am starting this series as a brief return to movie reviews from 2010 that I neglected to post in order with the preceding five issues of Just the Ticket, four of which were posted online at the Columbia Basin Herald in October 2011. In this first trip back, we visit October 13, 2010 and discover than No Man is an Island:
Every family has its secrets. Such is the premise of City Island, as personified by the Rizzo family. Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) is a proud prison guard—“I’m not a prison guard, I'm a correctional officer!"—with a few things to hide. One being that he is pursuing his lifelong dream of being an actor (under the tutelage of the wise and grizzled Adam Arkin, and managed by a personal-yet-professional Emily Mortimer), all the while telling his family that he is going to poker games. Enter our hero's second secret—“My biggest secret, my darkest secret, the secret of all my secrets”—his unexpected relationship with one of his inmates (Steven Strait), whom he has released to his own custody and brought home with him under pretenses of work detail, and life for the Rizzos as they know it takes an unexpected turn.
City Island, as described above, is a family drama. But at its heart, as with any real-world family, drama cannot exist without comedy to get us from one moment to the next. Unfortunately, the characters in City Island are driven to blind action by subtle clues (usually discovered under comedic circumstances), succumbing automatically to fear and anger, assuming the worst and neglecting to pursue truth (an effort by writer/director Ray de Felitta to force a climax of heartfelt serendipity).
The bright light in City Island is Garcia’s Vince Rizzo, whose self-referential irony—"I’m no actor"—adds to the humor of the film, while his over-the-top audition scene for a DeNiro/Scorcese project rings of fellow Scorcese alumni Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, who both had their big breaks following improvisation in famous Scorcese pictures (The Godfather and Taxi Driver, respectively). Rizzo, for better or worse, is the hero of City Island, winning through his own secrecy, as well as knee-jerk accusations from his family, and showing that whatever doesn’t kill us (or drive us apart from our loved ones) makes us stronger.
A-
Every family has its secrets. Such is the premise of City Island, as personified by the Rizzo family. Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) is a proud prison guard—“I’m not a prison guard, I'm a correctional officer!"—with a few things to hide. One being that he is pursuing his lifelong dream of being an actor (under the tutelage of the wise and grizzled Adam Arkin, and managed by a personal-yet-professional Emily Mortimer), all the while telling his family that he is going to poker games. Enter our hero's second secret—“My biggest secret, my darkest secret, the secret of all my secrets”—his unexpected relationship with one of his inmates (Steven Strait), whom he has released to his own custody and brought home with him under pretenses of work detail, and life for the Rizzos as they know it takes an unexpected turn.City Island, as described above, is a family drama. But at its heart, as with any real-world family, drama cannot exist without comedy to get us from one moment to the next. Unfortunately, the characters in City Island are driven to blind action by subtle clues (usually discovered under comedic circumstances), succumbing automatically to fear and anger, assuming the worst and neglecting to pursue truth (an effort by writer/director Ray de Felitta to force a climax of heartfelt serendipity).
The bright light in City Island is Garcia’s Vince Rizzo, whose self-referential irony—"I’m no actor"—adds to the humor of the film, while his over-the-top audition scene for a DeNiro/Scorcese project rings of fellow Scorcese alumni Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, who both had their big breaks following improvisation in famous Scorcese pictures (The Godfather and Taxi Driver, respectively). Rizzo, for better or worse, is the hero of City Island, winning through his own secrecy, as well as knee-jerk accusations from his family, and showing that whatever doesn’t kill us (or drive us apart from our loved ones) makes us stronger.
A-
Comments
Post a Comment