SIX WAYS TO SUNDAY
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Stratosphere Entertainment Director: Adam Bernstein Writer: Adam Bernstein, Marc Gerald, from the novel by Charles Perry "Portrait of a Young Man Drowning" Cast: Norman Reedus, Deborah Harry, Elina Lowensohn, Isaac Hayes, Adrien Brody
The term "Jewish gangster" rolls off the tongue like an oxymoron--notwithstanding Louis Lepke, Meyer Lansky, and Bugsy Siegel. Insider trading schemes, OK. But hit-men? In his second turn at directing, Adam Bernstein sets us straight about crooked men who happen to be Jewish, members of an organized crime family who run a small town. The movie is based on a 1962 novel by jazz musician Charles Perry about Depression era gangsters in Brooklyn, but writers Adam Bernstein and Marc Gerald update the action to the present and set the story in the stagnant town of Youngstown, Ohio.
And what a story it is! While the noirish novel is consistently downbeat, Bernstein and Gerald have injected considerable humor, making "Six Ways" cinematic and contributing mightily to our enjoyment of the tale. This film is offbeat in the best sense of the word; full of surprises, containing mythic references particularly to the legend of Oedipus, and presenting a complex treatment of its principal character whose loyalty is sought by two women and by an amusing, albeit murderous, gang of criminals.
The focus of the story is a teenager, Harry Odum (Norman Reedus), an eighteen-year-old whose mother, Kate (Deborah Harry), is unable to support either herself or the boy. Harry, whose work background consists exclusively of odd jobs such as hamburger-flipper, turns to crime for lack of other options. He learns the hard way that crime does not pay and seeks redemption through love.
Here is a plot that could have been structured like scores, nay hundreds of coming-of-age dramas and comedies, but writer-director Bernstein knows how to build up more offbeat scenarios. He catches us off guard with a number of surprises, and assembles his scenes in an expressionistic manner common the plays that came out of France and Germany during the early part of this century--through a progression of sharply edited episodes. Bernstein reaches beyond the surface of his characters, two in particular, to show how their attitudes and actions are preventing them form achieving happiness and how they transform themselves to get in touch with their generous and kind spirit beneath.
What is most startling about the picture is the Oedipal relation between the 18-year-old Harry Odum (Norman Reedus) and his manipulative and love-starved mother, Kate (Deborah Harry). Kate, whose husband had long ago abandoned her, now shares dilapidated quarters in Youngstown, Ohio with Harry, seeking a wide range of control over his life. Like The Creator, she even takes on the power of letting there by light, or not, and tends to switch off the electricity when she suspects Harry, still a virgin, is reading a book about human sexuality. What is even more astonishing is that he gives him his baths, looking the other way when he briefly soaps his privates, and then gently massages his body with a towel to dry him off. We need not wonder for long why he appears to be asexual--to tell a woman who has fallen for him that he feels nothing when in the presence of either women or men.
Seeking a sense of belonging, he becomes the only Gentile in the local Jewish mafia by severely beating a peep-show manager who is not paying off his loan. Together with young Arnie Finklestein (Adrien Brody), he is given assignments by gangster Abie Pinkwise (Peter Appel) and big boss Louis Varga (Jerry Adler)--who introduce him to gefilte fish, convincing him that only Gentiles avoid spending money lavishly, and that only Christian men would wear powder-blue suits when stepping out. Most of the tough characters he connects with have soft spots, with Abie in particularly holding his uncle Max (Vincent Pastore) in the highest regard. When Harry develops a soft spot in his heart for Louis Varga's crippled maid, Iris (Elina Lowensohn), the lines are drawn with Iris and Harry's mother competing for the poor teenager's exclusive affection.
The movie, which gets its name from police officer Bill Bennett's (Isaac Hayes) admission that Harry smashed his nose six ways to Sunday, is packed with wit, charm, sentiment, and slapstick, and highlights the contrast between the lavish neo-Raphaelite mansion run by the mob leader and the battered wooden working-class home of the teenager and his mother. It spotlights as well the struggle Harry faces when he has to choose between the seductive charms of his mother, formerly a lounge singer who has an unnatural interest in her boy, and the more bashful but insistent attention of young Iris. Norman Reedus comes across like a young Kenneth Branagh whose mixed feelings about everyone else in the movie are a source of continual amusement. Much is made of a mysterious and dapper character named Madden (Holter Graham) who is a frequent visitor to Harry's little world and who provides the catalyst for a good deal of his actions.
The cleverly photographed and sharply edited scenarios of this inventive story and its crackerjack ensemble performances succeed in accenting its offbeat qualities: we don't wonder that director Bernstein labels the genre "darkly comedic/Oedipal, Jewish gangster/thriller.
Rated R. Running Time: 97 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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