| Overall Grade: |
C- |
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| Story: |
B |
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| Acting: |
C |
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| Direction: |
D+ |
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| Visuals: |
C- |
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Mediocre Sam Could've Been Great
by Yahoo! Movies User (movies profile)
Apr 2, 2006
2
of
2 people found this review helpful
Spike Lee really screwed this one up. The story is intriguing and good. It has a nice, interesting premise. A tightly knit nieghborhood's reaction to the rampage of serial killer David 'Son of Sam' Berkowitz in the sweltering New York summer of the late 70's. The filming is mostly very articulate and stylistic but the dialogue is dreadful and the film ends up veering off in so many directions, as do most of Lee's films. Our lead character, John Leguizamo, being John Leguizamo - same as Empire, is truly an unlikeable and pathetic twirp. Adrien Brody is probably the best memberof the cast,bringing sensitivity to his role as a punk rocker but neighborhood outcast and prime 'suspect' amongst his paranoid peers as being the Son of sam killer. What they do to him - what Leguizamo does to him is *****ing cowardly horrible.Almost Mystic River-ish though not to that extreme level and hey, River was a great film with depth and real characterization. Besides Brody, these characters are one dimensional and truly impossible to care about. The scenes featuring Bercowitz going mad in his apartment are funny and stupid but the worst acting in a film for the year '99 goes to Ben Gazzarra. His Italian mafioso is the most hammiest, stereotypical characterization that I've probably ever scene. He should be ashamed. In fact this film is filled with bad stereotypes and the usual Lee racial tensions that have zilch to do with the story. The social commentary is mind boggling and accounts for whythis film is a staggering 2 hours and twenty minutes when it could've fit into 90 minutes just fine and been better off forit. This movie is hard to like though I admit that I really wantd to. |
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