Depp deep undercover, Pacino in Wily Loman phase

DONNIE BRASCO (1997)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Original review from 1997 screening)

Ever since "GoodFellas" burst into movie screens in 1990, there has been a renaissance of gangster pictures. The difference between the gangsters now and the gangsters from the cinema of the 1930's is the reality - the overwhelming verisimilitude of the scenario. We just don't see gangster plotting to kill others - we also see their family lives, their inner circles and their outbursts of violence, sometimes involving hacksaws and other gory methods. Some of these stories are based on actual events. To date, the best recent gangster pictures are Scorsese's ultra-realistic "GoodFellas" and "Casino" and De Palma's ferocious "The Untouchables." For more family-oriented, ethically acceptable gangsters crossed with a fascinating look at racial relations, you can look at Robert De Niro's directorial debut, "A Bronx Tale." Count "Donnie Brasco" among the best of the batch - a funny, brutal, galvanizingly emotional portrait of a man who risks everything just to join the mob. Never mind that this man is a cop.

Johnny Depp plays the real-life cop, Joseph Pistone, who went undercover in the mob in order to infiltrate them. His job was to have lasted 3 to 6 months - he went on for two years! Pistone assumes the name Donnie Brasco, a jeweler who can help Lefty (Al Pacino), an older man who wears gold-tinted sunglasses and works for Sonny Black (Michael Madsen), to determine if a diamond is a "fulgesi" or not. This mob group is at a lower chain on the Mafia meter, closer to the guys in "Mean Streets" than in "The Godfather." They wait in the streets in the freezing cold of Brooklyn for the chief mob boss. Some of them try to take anything they can for money, including the removal of parking meters!

Donnie is in this dangerous world almost immediately, thanks to Lefty who vouches for him. Lefty teaches Donnie the rules, like shaving his mustache, how wearing cowboy boots and jeans is a no-no, how to carry money (never put it in the wallet), never pay for drinks, and so on. Donnie is so involved that he fools everyone, especially after beating up a Japanese waiter for being forced to remove his boots. Eventually, after Sonny Black moves up in the ranks, more money is owed to Sonny Red (the chief boss is in jail, if I understood correctly). So Donnie brings up an idea of making money at a nightclub in Florida. They all agree, though Lefty has reservations. But Donnie is so deep in the Mafia life that he ignores his wife (Anne Heche) and three daughters - he only visits them when it is convenient.

"Donnie Brasco" avoid all the cliches and conventional trappings of most mob movies. The film, as written by Paul Attanasio, does not pussyfoot around Donnie's own safety in this organization or his downward spiral about becoming the very thing he is working against. Most films would show Donnie to be so banal and charmless and righteous that it would hardly strike a chord of truth. Johnny Depp shows this character inside and out, revealing layers such as his growing violent behavior (especially to his wife) and his incessant need to curse. And his vulnerability is also evoked as he develops a mutual friendship with Lefty - if Donnie leaves Lefty and is exposed, Lefty could be whacked for having vouched for an FBI agent.

Al Pacino plays Lefty as a weary, joyless man who has 26 hits under his belt and more experience than anyone in his crew, yet he is still working for someone else. Lefty is like the Wily Loman of Mafia types, and we grow to sympathize with a man who would love to leave the life and settle down with his girlfriend. Still, he hopes to make more money and Donnie could be the key to wealth - both men have a downward spiral to endure that is touching and intensifying to watch.

As directed with refreshing restraint and observational details by Brit Mike Newell, "Donnie Brasco" is one hell of a motion picture. It is explosive, humane, blackly funny and filled with some of the best written dialogue in eons. This is not the world of dynamic energy and profane violence of "GoodFellas" (though there is one scene that is not meant for the squeamish). Instead, it is really about friendship and trust, even if one of those is violated. Pacino's last scene, showing Lefty leaving his life behind him and his recognition of a deeper truth, is unforgettable. "Donnie Brasco" is about as great as a Hollywood movie can get.

An 'uninspired' Sellers trail

TRAIL OF THE PINK PANTHER (1982)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

It is a shame that Peter Sellers passed away before he made any more Pink Panther films. Something tells me he would not have approved of a collection of deleted scenes from an early Pink Panther flick to justify a new sequel. His presence is missing in virtually half of the film, and the other half is hilarious and vintage Sellers but also feels incongruous.

The first 40 minutes of the film have Sellers as the inept, clumsy Inspector Clouseau as he tries on various nose and hair disguises, fools around with a hotel phone where a cleaning woman keeps knocking him out the window that leaves him dangling with the phone cord (easily the funniest scene in the film), an airplane bathroom sequence where he pretends to have a broken leg and can't quite sit in the tiny toilet, and many more clever, physical comedy scenes with the one and only Burt Kwouk as Cato, Clouseau's servant (most of which are deleted scenes from "The Pink Panther Strikes Again").

The rest of the film loses steam and laughs when Joanna Lumley (from the hysterical "Absolutely Fabulous") appears as a TV reporter who wants to find out the truth about Clouseau's disappearance, who is rumored to have been assassinated. She interviews everyone that ever knew Clouseau, including Clouseau's arch-nemesis Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom, the second best thing about this movie). When Dreyfus can't contain himself from laughing about Clouseau's supposed brilliance in question by the reporter, the movie gets the right idea about using a well-known character from the series and exploiting it for all it is worth. When Robert Loggia, David Niven, Capucine and other series regulars appear, the film falls flat on its face since they have been misdirected to be serious. Big mistake! Same with the unfortunately dull, interminable sequence with Robert Mulligan as Clouseau's father - it is so flat and monotonous, you begin to wonder if a clone of the director Blake Edwards was on the set.

First half of "Trail of the Pink Panther" is classic. Second half loses momentum and fails to engage the viewer. Director Blake Edwards could have shot for the moon and had Herbert Lom take over the second half because Lom's moments are priceless and he has exceptionally good comic timing and a boisterous physical presence. Do away with all the interview nonsense (which do include some choice clips from earlier Panther films) and you would have had comic gold that even Sellers would've been proud of.

Loving God more than Elvis

GOD IS THE BIGGER ELVIS (2012)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

I always wondered what happened to Dolores Hart. She had a brief acting career that lasted six years, starring along side Elvis Presley in "Loving You" (where she had her first onscreen kiss) as well as working with other distinguished actors such as Anthony Quinn and Montgomery Clift. Dolores quit the business and fulfilled a higher calling she had ignored once already - she became a Benedictine nun at The Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Conn. "God is the Bigger Elvis" attempts to enlighten us on that transition but it never quite does.

Dolores was a Hollywood starlet and a fine actress, so what was this higher calling to Jesus? Hard to say because all she can say is she wanted to devote her life to God. Other nuns at the abbey speak of "making love to God" - something which I cannot quite comprehend. The rituals of the abbey are fascinating - the nuns cannot talk to each other while eating a meal and observations of silence and prayer are daily. But this documentary never probes Dolores' reasons for making such a startling change in her life - stripping herself of individuality and connecting to God in a remote (and beautiful) area of Connecticut. The other nuns speak of the same calling, as if escaping from modern society makes one, more pure of heart?

Most startling is Dolores, or should I say Mother Prioress Dolores Hart, and her meeting with another devoted Catholic, Don Robinson, an architect who was engaged to marry Dolores before she became a nun. It is a tough, emotional reunion, or so we think until he tells us that he has been visiting the abbey once every year since she joined. What is even sadder is that he never married despite dating several women, and still aches for her love. After their meeting, she walks away in tears. It is hard to know if she is unsure she made the right choice or sees a life she never had- those tears say so much and yet so little.

As a short introduction to Dolores Hart and her way of life, "God is the Bigger Elvis" is beguiling and fascinating. But no tough questions are asked, and the answers are only implied. Her silence can speak volumes, her love of God says much about her vocation but precious little about her as an individual apart from her union with God.

Tuskegee Airmen, Episode I?

RED TAILS (2012)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Producer George Lucas has spoken for several years about making smaller, more artistic films after the last "Star Wars" film, Episode III to be precise. That was ten years ago. Since then, he supervised the "Star Wars: Clone Wars" animated series and feature film, a fourth Indiana Jones film and then he retired. Or did he? Nope, he is back in Star Wars land with an upcoming Episode VII. So much for retirement. Sandwiched in between animated Star Wars and live Star Wars was a passion pet project of his about the Tuskegee Airmen called "Red Tails." The only problem is that rather than dramatizing these brave heroes of WW II, the movie reduces everything they stood for to the level of a far too simple-minded comic book.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the African-American pilots of the United States Army Air Forces (the 332d Fighter Group) who had the dubious task of circling the air in zones where no Nazis were to be found. Of course, in the opening sequence, the Tuskegee Airmen spot a Nazi-occupied train and blast away with tremendous glee, destroying the train and its armaments in glorious fashion. The top brass at the Pentagon do not want to engage these pilots in fighting the Nazis - white pilots will do because blacks are not seen as equal. Meanwhile, a mission is fast approaching that will require the 332d, with the stipulation that they will assist and protect the Allied landings at Anzio, Italy without actually engaging the enemy. Naturally, orders are not followed as the Tuskegee Airmen destroy an entire German airfield, once again in glorious fashion. I question the movie's authenticity in the air pilots' behavior, specifically their insatiable need for violently shooting down the enemy. I went along with it but I don't know how many people will believe it.

"Red Tails" has some superb special-effects in detailing how these planes fly in formation and shoot to kill. Most of the effects, however, look like effects and part of the blame must go to the undernourished characters. Squadron leader "Easy" Julian (Nate Parker), a heavy drinker, has Denzel Washington's cool factor but little personality. Same with  Joe "Lightning" Little (David Oyelowo), who develops a romance with an Italian woman whom he first meets when he waves to her while flying (only in the movies). These two characters are supposed to lend a little substance to the proceedings but they exist as cliches you have seen a million times before (It is hard to muster any enthusiasm for cliched pilots in cliched situations, especially an escape from a German fortress from one pilot that leaves a lot to be desired). Terrence Howard is the colonel who fights for these men to be taken seriously - you wish you saw more of him in the movie. Same with Cuba Gooding Jr. as a major who mostly nods and stares at his men -  why leave this actor out in the cold?

"Red Tails" is wrapped in nobility and various cliches. I am fine with seeing a movie about the Tuskegees crossed with a John Wayne bravado but this mediocre movie is a snoozer with vapid characters who do not make us care for their plight except in the most arbitrary sense. These historic, brave men deserve something more. And I do expect a lot more from George Lucas.  

Linda Lovelace minus hardcore truths

INSIDE DEEP THROAT (2005)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"Deep Throat," the most famous porn film ever made, is a film I've only seen in sections. Maybe the bad acting or the bad cinematography dulled my interest in it. Who knows. But who goes to see a porn film for quality filmmaking anyway? You are there for the explicit sex scenes, not the story. Perhaps in the 1970's, it was more than just the sex. "Inside Deep Throat" attempts to find out the hardcore truth (pardon the pun) but it never climaxes (pardon the pun).

"Deep Throat" is not the first porn film but it is the first one to have mainstream success. Gerard Damiano produced and directed the film, correctly thinking that such a film could be seen by couples in an actual movie theatre. Thus, with a budget of $25,000 dollars and an actress named Linda Lovelace, who apparently had a talent for oral sex, "Deep Throat" was born. As many of you probably know, Linda stars as a woman with an anomalous genetic function - her clitoris is in her mouth. I don't think I have to say much more.

Most of "Inside Deep Throat" details the fringes of porn filmmaking and how the mob helped finance most of it. "Deep Throat" grossed $600 million, though box-office statistics might be slightly off due to the money laundering (the same problem plagued the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre.") We see interviews with the cast of the film (including Damiano and Harry Reems, the male lead), moviegoers eager to see the film, protesters picketing, and luminaries such as Dick Cavett, Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner, Al Goldstein, and many more. Almost anyone who was a celebrity at that time saw "Deep Throat." I remember reading that Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma saw it and wondered at the screening why there were so many couples and sophisticates and no one in trenchcoats. It was a cultural phenomenon that was amplified by the Nixon administration who tried to censor it and almost succeeded. Of course, porn was never the same again, and now the censors are back trying to ban porn.

The problem with "Inside Deep Throat" is that it doesn't go deep enough (pardon the pun, again). We learn about a time and place that seems strangely more innocent, but there is no true insight into what made "Deep Throat" so phenonemal. And the issue of free speech doesn't seem to infuse the controversy much - the film could still be seen in theaters and it certainly made its money back leading to more porn films and even a sequel. Perhaps the real issue is that a blowjob became mainstream and acceptable long before Bill Clinton, and this frightened the Nixon administration. You are having sex and you are enjoying it! What a threat to the national order!

The late Linda Lovelace famously said that every time she had sex in "Deep Throat," she was actually being raped. There is no disputing that her boyfriend abused her but if Lovelace really felt that way, why did she make two more porn films? I remember seeing Lovelace at the Chiller Theatre convention in Meadowlands, NJ, where she signed VHS copies of "Deep Throat." I suppose she decided to accept the fact that she would be always be remembered for "Deep Throat." That acknowledgment might have lended some poignancy to "Inside Deep Throat."

Jason Voorhees in old-fashioned 3-D

FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3, 3-D (1982)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Seen one Friday the 13th flick, seen them all. I have not had the pleasure of seeing all ten sequels to the original 1980 shocker, which also had its own remake. Jason Voorhees has not been my favorite psycho killer either. "Friday the 13th Part 3" has the distinction of being the only sequel in the series to be in 3-D. That is a bit of a blessing because it has its shock value when you see bats, axes and other weapons thrust at the audience in three dimensions. Other than that, same old, same old.

Aside from a brief recap of Part 2 where poor Amy Steel survived the throes of the hooded Jason, this sequel finds more hormonal teens at Camp Crystal Lake. There are some hijinks of the low grade variety involving some old drifter who holds a severed eyeball, and the teens smoking weed and eating it after assuming that the cops are going to stop them. The most memorable character of this bunch is Shelly (Larry Zerner), a Seth Rogen-crossed-with-Jeff-Ross lookalike, who scares people because he is unable to communicate in any other way. He has a goalie mask and this is where we discover the advent of Jason's most iconic visage. And one of the other sympathetic teen characters is Chris Higgins (Dana Kimmell), who had survived Jason's attacks once before.

This "Friday the 13th" flick has its laundry list of slasher film ingredients. Axes, pitchforks, hot pokers and knives are thrust into bellies and heads. Sometimes someone is attacked in showers and in barns with plenty of haystacks cued with that creepy Jason Voorhees instrumental score. Best moment has Jason firing a spear from a spear gun at one unlucky victim. The ending is a creepy reprise of the original and it works as a shock moment yet "Part 3," which has got shocks galore and some gore, has little to differentiate it from the norm. The 3-D process is more of a tactic to make couples embrace each other and turn away from the screen, or at least the girl so she can be shielded from the screen as long as the cardboard 3-D glasses are not crushed.

I am not easily recommending this flick to anyone but it has an, albeit extremely slight, innocence to it. It is not the torture porn of the 2010 horror flicks, and it is hardly as gory as any of the other Friday the 13ths. It is not boring but it is also not much of anything other than using humans as slaughter slabs in more than three dimensions with two dimensional characters. I saw this on video back in 1983 in 2-D, and it is fun seeing it in 3-D and for that reason alone, it is hard to resist for Friday the 13th completists. Interestingly enough, this was supposed to have been the last installment but you can't keep a blood-stained goalie mask down for long.

Connery's Frank Buck in the Amazon

MEDICINE MAN (1992)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

John McTiernan's "Medicine Man" is another one of those giddy pleasures at the movies - a good/bad movie that is reasonably entertaining and offers little else except the grand Sean Connery. Connery's presence and his thick Scottish brogue often enhance such good/bad movies like "Highlander 2: The Quickening" and "Cuba." Sometimes they do little except annoy me like "Entrapment" or "First Knight" or the original "Highlander." And sometimes he matches the material for all its worth such as "The Anderson Tapes," "The Terrorist," James Bond, etc. Yes, I am a huge Connery fan but I still wonder what could've been done with the potentially ambitious "Medicine Man."

Connery is Dr. Robert Campbell, a gray-haired, ponytail-wearing biochemist living in the Amazonian forest. He is searching a cure for the greatest plague of the twentieth century - in a word, cancer. And he's found it. It has to do with ants and a specific kind of flower but, lo and behold, this is an ecological adventure movie (yep, Spielberg made his own several years later with "The Lost World"). You see there are mercenaries who are burning down the rainforests, a continuing ecological and environmental disaster, to build a road. As Campbell explains, "No rain, no rainforests!" Thank you Dr. Campbell.

And in the great tradition of the Kate Capshaw role of Irritable Female Characters comes Dr. Crane (Lorraine Bracco), nicknamed Dr. Bronx by Campbell, a research assistant from a pharmaceutical company who has come to investigate Campbell. Has the man completed any kind of research and can he prove it? Yes, of course. Even I learned that in General Science in high school - if you have proposed a theory, prove it with samples and notes.

Naturally, we get lots of truly scenic vistas, lots of rope climbing, a nasty spill into the river and down a hillside, scenes of comic relief involving some bark that is more potent than caffeine, lots of natives, a lot of native womens' breasts, lots of dancing in the night by a bonfire, a disturbing nightmare, and no chance at all of seeing Bracco's breasts (hey, this is a PG-13 movie).

Of course, "Medicine Man" is occasionally a little too humorous, intentional or not, and some scenes play off as being a little too campy (Connery in a headdress for one). But this is marginally better than the average good/bad movie. Connery is in full command and dominates every scene he's in. Lorraine Bracco, who only has a handful of moments where she is restrained, may make you want to scratch your fingernails on a blackboard. Still, Connery and Bracco do make a good team. The ending is almost too good for what precedes it, and there is a stunning confrontation with a real medicine man that depicts a far more serious movie than the one we are watching.

Basically, "Medicine Man" is a 1930's adventure movie with an ecological theme upgraded to modern sensibilities. If it had been made in the 30's, Frank Buck would've been cast in the Campbell role. Connery gives it the prestige to differentiate it slightly from the norm.