Robert-63
About 30 minutes into this film, I asked someone who had seen it before if it got any better. They replied, "No, it doesn't really get any better. And yet, it's somehow worth watching." They were quickly contradicted by another person who said, "No, it keeps on sucking. That kid is the worst child actor I've ever seen, and I mean including that kid who played Seven on 'Married with Children.'" I agree with the latter. This movie starts bad and truly only gets worse. In the first 30 minutes, you will see two glaring continuity errors, one spectacularly bad special effect, and a lifetime supply of bad writing and acting.I have not knowingly ever seen any of Cassavetes' directorial work, and I am in no rush to correct that. It will take a lot of convincing to make me consider giving him another chance to impress me.Grade: 1 out of 10. Abysmal. Horribly bad in a way that makes me think less of people who think it's good.
tubbers20
I've watched it 3 times in the past 10 days. But I have to admit that when I saw it years back I didn't care for it much. It's funny how your viewpoint changes over the years. I'm just about sure that some of the critics here may also do the same as the years pass. However, most so-called 'critics' are so full of themselves anyway in my opinion.But what's not to love about the film? Directed by John Cassavetes, the music by Bill Conti, the lovely opening credits and artwork by Romare Bearden, the great NYC locations, etc. I love the opening sequence where the watercolor painting of night buildings dissolves into a real night scene and those two opening minutes of the fly over of New York and Yankee Stadium and as we see the Statue Of Liberty you can see that dawn is approaching with the sky lighting up. As the fly over continues under the Brooklyn Bridge then the shot of the bridge with Manhattan in the background and George Washington bridge in the lower part of the frame. And finally the camera pans to a day game at Yankee Stadium to zoom up on the bus approaching. I did spot a continuity glitch where the 3 teens are running toward the El and there's a crowd of people on the corner and when they show them running from the bus the crowd is missing. Big deal. One more comment before I go when they show Gloria and Phil at the cemetery and the scene slowly dissolves with the gravestones and laps into the bridge shot of NYC skyline and I thought how the skyscrapers seemed to symbolize the gravestones too. Life and death in the Naked City.I Love This Movie
elshikh4
What really made me pity this movie is its idea and what it got of elements. The Beauty and the Beast in the action genre.. Great, and that was before movies like (Léon - 1994) came out, but it seemed that a tornado of naivety hit the whole thing ruthlessly. It needed a lot and a lot and a lot to be a great movie. The dealing with the possible good material was highly provocative where some scenes deserved the laugh, because the writing (Gloria threatens the whole gang in a restaurant!), or the directing (the boy says : "I love you to death" while the camera is almost shooting only his forehead !!?), or the acting (The mafia men couldn't act, John Adames as the kid was unbearably awful = John Cassavetes's responsibility).Elaborately, It forces me to believe that its script had been written (read : fabricated) in 2 days, especially when it relies on the dialog to develop everything, and the dialog was too far-fetched to be logically possible. Also with matters like killing the family at the beginning which's my definition for horrible hastiness, or the end where it turns out that Gloria is Supergirl or the woman of steel, which's quite nothing in familiar flicks, but on the top of OTHER catastrophes here, it is pain barrier. I become so sick whenever I watch artistic movies that lack everything except the laziness, and proudly it brags with that in the name of novelty, realism, whatever. Here, the anguish is double because it's not a movie like that, it's an American thriller with different idea and a dull everything I suppose ! It looked as low as some Blaxploitation movies while it isn't one, it just took the worst of them.Some would say "It's a classic", and other would say "it's the worst ever" ! Actually it's a movie you can summarize its status by the irony between (Rowlands) who got an Oscar nomination for it, and (Adames) who got a Razzie nomination for It (and fairly won !), so IT WAS the Beauty and the Beast indeed ! And I ranked it as one of the worst Buddy-movies, if not the worst ever. Though, when I first watched it I was a kid (a freak kid who loves movies more than life!) so I loved it so much. In fact I think (Gena Rowlands)'s acting was impressive, she owned the role and the screen, if only that was through another script! The cinematography tried to be as non-Hollywood as it could be, I recall clever sequence with a running steadicam (in 1980) in which Gloria escapes with the kid from the restaurant, as a whole it managed to be somewhat harshly real yet through bad-made unreal story ! Plus it didn't add anything profound.. Unlike the music.(Gloria) as a movie, fails on the romantic level and sucks on the thrill level, but the music helps out to redeem both. Bill Conti handled it seriously more than anybody got involved in it. OH MY GOD, his music was like a diamond in the rough. No doubt it's bigger than the movie. It managed to give it a sublime soul, a touch of greatness, and wide shadows to the flat characters and fabricated events. Maybe Conti believed in the story and the movie to the utmost, or he didn't watch the movie but how he loves his work and uses to do it rightly ! Or maybe he did watch it so he was forced to lift it up and cover its faults. It created such a personality for the weak movie, that embodied the Latino background, the chase's feel, the rebellion sense of the title's character, and the passion between her and the kid; nearly all what the movie flopped at !. I think Conti was inspired by Yoakhen Rodrego's Concerto D'aranjuez, its spirit seems clear somewhat in the tunes. Anyhow, It's some catchy soundtrack that marked a movie with high quietly lacked it badly on so many levels. Sometimes, rare times, the music makes the glory of some movies, but Bill Conti just revived it, and donated it with some sensitive case or dramatic deepness, but it needed more and more to be as larger than life as its music.So take the soundtrack and remake (Gloria), I'm not kidding, (Gus Van Sant) sort of did it with (Bernard Herrmann)'s music through his (Psycho - 1999) but not to be like it, as a deformation for its original, because it can't stand more inferiority.
