Friday, July 16, 2021
Homicide
- Commentary: Here's a movie that had me so puzzled I watched it two and a half times, then looked online for a full, detailed summary of the story (linked to the title, above) in order to understand the the movie. Turns out, I was wrong about the identity of the man in chains and a jump suit being shuffled down the hall at the very end of the film who turns and smiles at Detective Bobby Gold. I thought that guy was the librarian, but it was the man at the beginning of the movie who had killed his wife and kid(s) [Did he have one kid or more?] and promised to tell Gold the nature of evil. Which makes more sense than my misunderstanding.
For another take on the movie here's Roger Ebert's four star review. Frankly, I kind of have a feeling that men, in particular (versus women) have a special place in their hearts for the kind of hard biting male-to-male drama David Mamet incorporated in this film, and some others.
Clearing that up, however, didn't really change my understanding of the bulk of the movie. Bobby Gold is a human who is stuck between a birth identity he didn't know he carried and a work/life identity he thinks he understands but doesn't. He thinks the two are intertwined in a way that they aren't, and doesn't really understand how they are intertwined until after he's more or less taken out of commission from his work/life. When he understands that the intertwining has nothing to do with him or his Jewishness, well, at the end of the film the camera catches him in the discomposure of being stunned.
There are Mamet scripts I enjoy more than this one. This film is a hard row for me to mentally hoe. There are Mamet scripts that I think I don't understand because I'm not male and women suffer different identity crises than men. This movie is one of them. Glengarry Glen Ross is another. But I can say I loved the content and delivery of the dialogue, the extraordinarily clean presentation of Gold's internal conflict and the surprise ending, a double surprise because I had to amend my understanding of the entire film once I correctly identified the prisoner being walked down the hall. To certain death.
Wow. Makes me want to watch Glengarry Glen Ross again and piques my curiosity about American Buffalo.
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Joe Mantegna Buddy Gold William H. Macy Tim Sullivan Ving Rhames Robert Randolph Natalia Nogulich Chava Vincent Guastaferro Lt. Senna J. J. Johnston Jilly Curran Lionel Mark Smith Charlie Olcott Rebecca Pidgeon Rebecca Pidgeon
Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
Release Date: 1991
Directed by David Mamet.
Labels: coming-of-age2, Criterion2, detective1, mystery2, police-procedural
