GLORIA (1999)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
(Originally reviewed in 2000)
(Originally reviewed in 2000)
"Gloria" is unbelievably funny and so rottenly made that you can't help but like it, for the sheer audacity of it being so bad. Only director Sidney Lumet is not a director who can fail and muster such idiocy with an unrealistic East Coast tale - after all, Lumet is a New York director who has crafted realism in many of his best pictures. This film is directed by someone who has no idea what to do with a project that has the pedigree of John Cassavetes.
Sharon Stone plays Gloria, a gun moll who attempts to run all over New York City with a supposedly tough yet tender kid (Jean-Luke Figueroa) who is the survivor of a family that was gunned down (he assumes he is the "man"). Gloria also takes along a diskette that contains crucial information needed by the mob (headed by George C. Scott with his main henchman, incredulously played by Jeremy Northam). Gloria runs around in high heels and sexy clothes that scream loudly, yet she manages to outwit her pursuers at every turn (this made me laugh throughout).
A high-speed car chase is actually thrilling at one point and keeps you on edge. But there is not one note that is believable at all. Cassavetes' original 1980 flick by the same name possessed authority with the casting of Gena Rowlands. The original "Gloria" also felt grounded in some reality - it was also thrilling and edgy and it was probably the late master's most accessible film. Here, we just have Sharon Stone with a bad Big Apple accent and turgid villains that utter the same old phrases we have heard at least ONE MILLION times before. Lumet's picture is never really boring, but it is never really much of anything and one wonders what prompted Lumet to remake it. Still, there is Sharon Stone and she is a looker, no matter what she does.
