MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN (1996)

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Thursday, June 29, 2023

NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN (1996)

Young, idealistic Manhattan D.A. meets entrenched police corruption (and a cover-up trail leading back his way) in this solid, if predictable Sidney Lumet pic. Writing his own script, Lumet knows he knows this territory all too well, shaking things up with eyebrow-raising casting choices, unusual structure, even devant garde jump cuts. (He’s not trying to wake us up, but himself.) A 3-act prologue sees escaped cop-killing Harlem drug lord targeted, cornered & tried; turning himself in on the advice of a high-profile attorney arguing self-defense against corrupt police precincts out to get him. After that, the film proper brings internal police corruption center stage as untested Manhattan D.A. Andy Garcia learns how the cause of justice is sometimes served by bending the rules. And if that sounds like the plot of every other Sidney Lumet film, so be it. Seeing how he makes it spin is the key. Here, coaxing previous D.A. Ron Leibman into recreating his Tony Award-winning Roy Cohn act from ANGELS IN AMERICA; ending Richard Dreyfuss’s above-the-title A-list days splitting the diff between radical defense attorney William Kunstler & character actor Jack Warden; giving top femme Lena Olin little to do but cook scrambled eggs for Garcia (Lumet unaware women’s roles have evolved); pretending leprechaun-sized Scot Ian Holm could be Cuban Andy Garcia’s pop in any known universe*; and spotlighting strong early turns from Colm Feore, James Gandolfini, many others. Pretty entertaining, too. More so when you imagine how it would be stretched out today to fill 10 streaming one-hour episodes.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Impatience and spontaneity, it’s Lumet’s gift and Achilles’ Heel. The visual insensitivity sometimes off the charts (see THE WIZ/’78). Count on him not to notice that visually Sean Connery, Dustin Hoffman & Matthew Broderick in FAMILY BUSINESS/’89 could never be three generations of the same family line. Here, embarrassed by having Holm & Garcia as father & son Liam & Sean Casey, he extemporizes by showing Mom’s tombstone read Maria Nunez Casey. See, he noticed. Favorite clueless Lumet visual has the eyes of the kid in DANIEL/’83 who grows up to be Timothy Hutton change in a matched closeup dissolve from the kid’s brown to Hutton’s blue.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Not really better, but Lumet feels more engaged with similar stories of NYPD corruption in both PRINCE OF THE CITY and Q&A/’90. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/prince-of-city-1981.html

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Thursday, June 29, 2023

NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN (1996)

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