MAD DOG AND GLORY
A film review by David Pimmel
Copyright 1993 David Pimmel
Directed by John McNaughton Starring Robert De Niro, Bill Murray, Uma Thurman Rated R for language, violence, brief nudity, simulated sex
Synopsis ========
Robert De Niro plays reclusive police evidence technician/ photographer Wayne, who is called "Mad Dog" because he is anything but. One night he walks into a robbery and saves mobster/ loan shark Frank Milo (Bill Murray)'s life. After a night of friendship Frank gives Wayne a present, Glory (Uma Thurman), a bartender who is basically in hock to Frank. Trouble and romance bloom.
Review ======
The strength of this film is in its characters. All three of the leads bring forth personalities with depth and consistency. The plot line is a little awkward and several scenes seem unnecessary, but the leads carry the film admirable. I was particularly impressed with Bill Murray. He seems to finally be developing into an actor rather than a comedian who acts. His performance here and in GROUNDHOG DAY are a far cry from his smug laugh at the world performances in MEATBALLS and the GHOSTBUSTERS film. He is finally playing characters with depth and interest. Robert De Niro has been handling the tough roles his entire career. This is not his best performance, but as always, he portrays another solid and believable character. However, after seeing TAXI DRIVER recently, it was a bit hard to adjust to De Niro's character at the beginning. Finally Uma Thurman as Glory gives a fairly strong performance. Unfortunately, her role provided the least substance so, occasionally she seemed lost.
This film was originally scheduled for release about six months ago. This is usually a sign that something is wrong. Here we don't see it as much. The one scene that seemed out of place was the second love scene of the movie. The first was actually a very powerful scene for plot and character development. The second seemed gratuitous and more like a five-minute filler and a chance to show a little skin. Also the end of the film seems a bit strained.
In summary, MAD DOG AND GLORY works because of the strong performances of its leads, despite a less than wonderful script and plot line. Particularly strong, as always, is De Niro, but Murray surprisingly strong as well.
Rating ======
Thumbs Up! *** out of **** --
David Pimmel pimmel@cs.wisc.edu
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews