FARE GAMES
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Edison Agami Films Director: Brian O'Hara Writer: Brian O'Hara (story by Isaac Agami) Cast: Russel Stuart, Eddie Estefan, Elizabeth Curtain, Marina Morgan
Driving a cab must be interesting. Every day you meet a variety of people and chances are some of them are celebrities whose popularity can rub off on you. If the job is so fascinating, why do so few New York drivers speak English? Nowadays, only immigrants with few skills seem to be getting into driving and even then, only temporarily until they can develop whatever is needed for something better. Fact is, there isn't much money if you're renting the vehicles and medallion and, if you own your own, you're paying off the $150,000 that it costs you nowadays just to get that badge on your hood that allows you to do business in New York. What's more you're putting in 12 hours a day with little exercise and considerable danger.
Because driving a taxi is so unpredictable, you'd think that drivers would have quite a few stories to tell. Before the great cafeteria The Belmore closed down a few years ago, that bustling restaurant was a hot spot for drivers who'd be able to park outside, use the facilities, and chew the fat with their colleagues about their fascinating experiences. You'd think that quite a few movies could be conjured up from such conversations, but "Fare Games" shows just how difficult translating cafeteria conversations into celluloid can be.
Isaac Agami, who produced the movie "Fare Games" in 1995 (which is being released only now, four years later), grew up in Jerusalem, where he developed a love for movies, but when he moved to New York some two decades ago, he found himself unable to earn a living as a distributor of independent films. He took to driving a cab. Some of the episodes of the movie may well be autobiographical. The trouble is that though the genre is ripe for both fun and melodrama, Mr. Agami's crew has shaped a film that is so ineptly written, so poorly acted, photographed and directed that you'd have to search under the hood, in the trunk, and under the back seat to find any redeeming value therein.
Under the virtually invisible direction of Brian O'Hara, "Fare Games" focuses on two forty-something drivers who are friends despite their distinct temperaments. Martin (Russel Stewart) is bald and divorced and looks his age. He lives alone and despite the many fares he picks up, he admits to getting along without a sexual outlet. By contrast, the tall and handsome Jimmy (Eddie Estefan) is married, lives in a spacious Long Island home that seems well beyond his means, with a wife who apparently does not work but spends her mornings cutting up men with her friend Marilyn. Each driver is to meet a woman who will change his life. Jimmy develops a thing with Jennifer (Marina Morgan), an attractive and uninhibited 20-year-old blond college student who invites him to spend evenings with her in her rich aunt's home in Riverdale. Martin teams up with Susie (Elizabeth Curtain), a sweet dancer in her twenties, who has been willing to dance in a topless bar but draws the line at her waistband. Needing a place to stay, she is invited by Martin to spend some time under his humble roof until she can get herself straightened out financially.
What passes for humor includes a guy who is spending time on a pay phone, throwing in terms from the 70's like "dude" and "bummer," some banal repartee between Jimmy and the waitress in a Queens diner, a threat by Jimmy's wife Barbara (Andre Leigh) to become the Lorena Bobbitt of the late 90's unless her husband 'fesses up to his affair, and some man-hating talk by Barbara's neighbor, Marilyn, who insists with a Brooklyn accent that "all men are dogs, just sniffing around."
There isn't a single episode on the long-running TV comedy "Taxi" that doesn't beat the humor, the wit, even the pathos of "Fare Games." Granted: there are no Judd Hirsches or Danny DeVitos is Mr. Agami's low-budget production. But during his 20+ years as a New Yorker, couldn't the producer have found a dancer who does not go through her role on Valium or a writer who doesn't exploit every dated and banal colloquy in the books?
Rated R. Running Time: 90 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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