City of Industry (1997)(DVD) Directed by John Irvin (The Dogs of War (1980), Turtle Diary (1985), Robin Hood (1991)), starring Harvey Keitel (Taxi Driver (1976), Bugsy (1991), Reservoir Dogs (1992), The Piano (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994)), with Famke Janssen (GoldenEye (1995), X-Men (2000), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), Bringing Up Bobby (2011)), Stephen Dorff (Public Enemies (2009)), Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People (1980), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009), The Ghost Writer (2010)), and Lucy Liu (Jerry Maguire (1996), Charlie’s Angels (2000), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Lucky Number Slevin (2006)), with a uncredited cameo by Elliott Gould (M*A*S*H (1970), The Long Goodbye (1973), Ocean’s Eleven (2001), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), Ocean’s Thirteen (2007), Contagion (2011)). City of Industry, a crime drama of betrayal and revenge, often said to be influenced by Heat, a 1995 crime drama directed by Michael Mann and starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Val Kilmer, is, unfortunately, somewhat of a disappointment. Keitel is very good camping Keitel, dead-pan, blunt or groaning; Stephen Dorff is mono-dimensional, nasty and stupid, with terrible hair; Timothy Hutton appears to be, frankly, in the wrong movie. And so one is all the more pleased to see Famke Janssen, tall, lost, sexy and jangly, just so, and Lucy Liu, however briefly, impenetrable and even sexier, not to mention an uncredited, and equally brief, amusing appearance by Elliott Gould as a loan-shark. Admittedly however, the writing leaves a great deal to be desired, as does the directing and the music really doesn’t work at all. What is interesting, though, is the wonderfully multi-ethnic – Chinese, Black, Hispanic, White – nature of the criminals and their gangs, all brutal, blood-thirsty and slow-witted. (PR)
See our post on the wonderfully entertaining 1973 film starring Elliott Gould, The Long Goodbye.
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