City by the Sea

The inspiration for the film was an article written by Michael McAlary titled Mark of a Murderer. This true story focused on three generations of men, a taxi driver executed for the murder of a baby, his son, a New York cop and the cops son, a junkie arrested for murder.

Although the sins of the father concept skipping a generation could have been interesting, I found the screenplay flawed. The film crams four generations and three relationships with women into 108 minutes. In itself, this is not a fault, but I left the film feeling as though pieces were missing and the whole story didnt work. The plot line begins with plenty of problems followed by crises. But the climax with an army of police was overdone and several plot threads were left unresolved. An important final scene has the junkie son arriving but how did he know where to go and, with no money, how did he get a gun?

On the other hand, the Scottish director, Michael Caton-Jones had a strong cast that did a great job. Robert DeNiro played the New York cop, Vincent LaMarca, and Frances McDormand played Michelle his girl friend. James Franco played the junkie son, Joey. He absolutely convinced me he was a burnt out druggie. I remembered him as the son of the Green Goblin bad guy in Spiderman (2002). Joeys girl friend, Gina, and LaMarcas ex-wife Maggie were good in supporting roles. However for me, all the good acting couldnt fill the holes.

DeNiro did effectively portray the conflict between his role as a cop and his role as a father and grandfather. This was the underlying core emotional issue, yet I felt it was incomplete and handled to quickly as an anticlimax.

A bit of trivia was that DeNiros adopted daughter played Vanessa in the film. Finally as a friend of mine said, its just another DeNiro cop film.

Reviewed April 4, 2003