THE OPPORTUNISTS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten First Look Pictures Director: Myles Connell Writer: Myles Connell Cast: Christopher Walken, Vera Farmiga, Cyndi Lauper, Donal Logue, Peter McDonald, Tom Noonan, Jose Zuniga
What do mayors of New York City, the Apple's yuppies, and Gotham tourists from the world over have in common? Simple. They rarely if ever go to the outer boroughs. New York City means Manhattan, and even then, only that island's stretch from the Battery to Ninety-Sixth Street. Everywhere else is the boonies. To paraphrase the old song, how ya gonna keep them up in the Bronx, after they've seen Macy's?
Can you blame them? Yes, but only in part. After all, while Staten Island may have a unique Tibetan museum, the Bronx a nationally famous zoological garden and Brooklyn the inimitable view of the skyline at the Heights promenade, there's only place to go for Broadway shows, slick hotels, clean streets and dazzling shops. On the other hand, while Manhattan may have its fascinating ethnic conclaves like Chinatown, Little Italy and Little Spain, a visit to neighborhoods in Queens will open tourists to the way real people live, people who crunch motor engines but not numbers and bars whose tenders know thankfully little about white wine spritzers and five-dollar bottles of Perrier. First- time director, Dublin-born Myles Connell, takes us to such a neighborhood with his character-driven movie about plain, basically good, hard-working people in the little-known vicinity of Sunnyside, Queens, one of whom has been twice driven to crime because he's down on his luck and wants to do good by his family. "The Opportunists" is the diametrical opposite of slick, commercial films portraying smooth and articulate robbers who have no identity other than the schematics of the plot. Because the noirish feature, developed at the Sundance Film Makers lab in 1995, has few ups and downs but moves ahead slowly, deliberately, with an emphasis on exploring the dimensions of its players, "The Opportunists" is not for everyone but for those who can appreciate a sincere, attentive, superbly cast film. This indie is a good example of the delights that small movies have over the likes of "M:I-2" and "Pulp Fiction."
As Vic Kelly (Christopher Walken) tells us early on, he did serve time for a botched bit of safecracking but gave back the take not really because his generosity reduced his sentence but because after his wife left him, "I had no one to spend the money on." In other words, Connell introduces us to a real family man, the converse of your common mugger whose family life runs the gamut from dysfunctional to non- existent. He lives with his 20-something daughter, Miriam (Vera Farmiga) and enjoys the affection of Sally (Cyndi Lauper), who runs the neighborhood bar, but when he meets up with an uninvited guest who is allegedly a relative back in Ireland (Michael Lawler played by the raffish Peter McDonald), he sees a way of picking himself out of a mountain of debt.
While the actual safecracking gives us the movie's only moments of traditional suspense, the real achievement of this picture is Connell's carefully drawn portrayal of a group of eccentric characters, people who will convince skeptics that outer-borough folks of similar ethnic and working-class background are not all alike. Tom Noonan, who was so wonderful in the thoroughly human drama of dating, "What Happened Was..." virtually steals the show as a shady locksmith, while Christopher Walken proves that he can be as vulnerable and compassionate in his quirky role as he was barbarous in "Sleepy Hollow." Adding special texture are Anne Pitoniak as Vic's crabby aunt and Peter McDonald as the wide-eyed Dubliner whose fantasy about a great safecracker proves both correct and inaccurate.
Rated R. Running time: 89 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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