City Hall
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Movie Reviews of City Hall
Movie Review: Not as good as expected
Summary: 3 Stars
When I read the list of the actors in "City Hall" I expected a lot, but somehow the movie lacked something to make it lasting. It's not the acting and it's not the story, they are all ok, but they don't lift the movie to the level that most Pacino or Cusack movies have. For the real fans of these two the movie is worth watching, but it won't be remembered in the next decades I think.
The political side I think is also not a new story, even Pacino himself has played on more movies about the same theme, but in Serpico he was a lot better.
Movie Review: City Hall
Summary: 3 Stars
A decent and somewhat entertaining movie about political corruption in New York, this movie arguably would have been a total flop were it not for Pacino and Cusack. I feel that the amount of killing is a little excessive and lends to the general pradicability of the plot. It was worth watching once, but I doubt I'll ever feel compelled to do so again.Movie Review: City Hall (1996)
Summary: 2 Stars
Cast: Harold Becker
Cast: Al Pacino, John Cusack, Bridgett Fonda, Danny Aiello, Martin Landau, David Paymer, Anthony Franciosa, Richard Schliff, Lindsay Duncan.
Running Time: 111 minutes
Rated R for language and some violence.
"City Hall" is one of those hopeful yet ultimately frustrating films that never really delivers toward its potential. It's as if the characters, the plot, and the pacing of the film were kept apart throughout filming, and then only introduced in the editing room. The film begins with a lackluster conflict, the accidental shooting of a child by a drug dealer with relatives in the NY mob families who looks as if he came directly from Central Casting, and acts just as stiff. Before we even know anything about this character, he's confronted by a possibly corrupt cop ( the entire background motivation and confusion regarding the cop's rational for meeting with the drug dealer alone, without backup and without reporting in first is left completely unresolved), gunfire is exchanged, and everyone is dead, including the innocent child, who is clearly injected into this formula for nothing more than aesthetic/emotional purposes, and is treated like "cinema-chum", shot dead for instant sympathy by the audience, only to draw in the bigger fish in the water, the primary characters.
On the heels of the shooting, we are introduced to our principles, Al Pacino as the mayor, John Cusack as the deputy mayor, single-handedly managing the entirety of New York. The completely contrived setup of the administration of a city the size of New York being managed, at least from all appearances we are given on screen, by these two characters is beyond laughable, but insipid. The central plot of the movie springs from the reaction by City Hall to this one shooting incident, as the world is (we suppose) put on temporary pause for days afterward in New York by this event. Cusack abandons his supposed position with City Hall and becomes a knee-jerk Mickey Spilane, trodding beside Bridget Fonda on some half-ass investigation of the politics surrounding the now dead cop, suspected of corruption, and the question of why the drug dealer was ever on the streets in the first place, having been questionably released on parole years before. Everyone phones in their performances, which appears as if everyone approached the movie with high hopes, then got distracted by something better to do, (possibly calling their agents for better scripts once this movie started filming) and just showed up to through with the dialogue. Numerous gaffs, faux pauxs regarding life in New York, cornball accents by Cusack, Fonda's character operating with the depth of a spring puddle, vanilla backgrounds, boring dialogue (save Al Pacino's impassioned, yet ultimately weak tirades toward the shooting of James Bone and his personal conversations with Pappas) make for a really unsatisfying films; "City Hall" just can't deliver and feels like a TV movie of the week.
Movie Review: CITY HALL
Summary: 2 Stars
THE MOVIE WAS SOME WHAT BORING IN THE BEGINNING. IT PICKS UP IN THE MIDDLE. GOOD ACTING DONE BY PACINO AND CUSACH. THE ENDING WAS NOT GOOD AT ALL. IT WAS A BIG LET DOWN. I FELT SHORT CHANGED.Movie Review: Bogged down in the bureaucracy..
Summary: 1 Stars
Harold Becker is a director you can trust, that is, if you're Al Pacino. If you're just some stiff with $8.00 for a movie ticket, then `let the buyer beware' should be your credo.I am not a big Pacino fan, feeling he only plays one character well, and that one I'm way past tired. John Cusack, on the other hand, is a different story. Next to him Pacino has a good chance of looking good here, and he does.
What Bridget Fonda or her character is doing, I have no idea. The role she plays here is so meaningless you have to wonder if she put some money in the picture herself. In the fast moving world of Hollywood's careers, one rarely recovers from this Waterworld sized mistake. She gets her mortgage paid, I'm sure, but we get absolutely nothing in return. The on-screen chemistry between Fonda and Cusack rivals the Jodie Foster-Matthew McConaghey pairing in "Contact", (or Lisa Marie Presley and anybody), for lack of heat.
The story? Who knows? It wanders aimlessly (like New York City bureaucracy) to an unsatisfactory, or no real conclusion (like New York City bureaucracy). If the purpose was to show us that even those with best of intentions...(can't get anything done) well we know that already. Maybe that there is a fine line between the good guys and the bad guys...but we know that already.
That a Harold Becker movie will leave you less than satisfied....we know that already.