NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN
A film review by Walter Frith
Copyright 1997 Walter Frith
Comments on this review may also be sent to wfrith@icom.ca
DIRECTOR SIDNEY LUMET'S LATEST FILM COVERS FAMILIAR TERRITORY WITH A NEW TWIST
His first big screen film as a director came in 1957 with '12 Angry Men' and he was already showing dimensions of talent that would place him in film history as one one Hollywood's most searing and dramatic filmmakers. Throughout they years that have passed since then his other films such as 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' (1962), 'The Pawnbroker' (1965), 'Serpico' (1973), 'Dog Day Afternoon' (1975), 'Network' (1976) 'Prince of the City' (1981) 'The Verdict' (1982) and many others have served not only as obvious social commentary but as scorching indictments of the 'system'. His name is Sidney Lumet, a man with a mind as diverse as the subject matter he successfully tackles and rarely does he miss the mark.
His latest effort 'Night Falls on Manhattan' shows signs of a well seasoned mind ready to bring an old story to the screen with a very new twist. Based on the novel 'Tainted Evidence' by Robert Daley it focuses on a police officer turned lawyer (Andy Garcia) who wins an important case as an assistant D.A. for the city of New York in the trial of a major drug dealer and is nominated to run as head D.A. when the one in office (Ron Liebman) suffers medical problems. During the trial that made his career he butts heads in court with a liberal, idealistic defense attorney (Richard Dreyfuss) and falls romantically for Dreyfuss' assistant (Lena Olin). This needless romantic subplot is about the only thing that's really not necessary to the film's success. Garcia's father (Ian Holm) and his father's partner (James Gandolfini) are under suspicion as rogue cops who may have accepted money from the dealer convicted by Garcia and the story gains depth and subtext better than practically any other film released so far this year with a top notch cast in fine form all around.
What makes 'Night in Manhattan' such a credible and well textured film is the fact that Lumet served not only as the film's director but worked directly from the adapted screenplay he wrote on his own without anyone else's point of view disrupting his work and does justice to Robert Daley's novel in the process. With overtones of 'Serpico' mixed in as well, Lumet has not duplicated his own success but has created a film brimming with emotional, moral and legal factors that are credible and ones that make us shake our heads while watching the evening news or looking at our daily newspapers.
OUT OF 5> * * * *
Visit Mr. Frith's 'Movie Reviews' section of 'The Review' at http://www.arrowweb.com/review
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