Gloria
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Movie Reviews of Gloria
Movie Review: Classic "on the run" film
Summary: 5 Stars
Gena Rowlands, perfectly cast as Gloria, reluctantly takes a rather bratty little boy, marked for death, under her gangster moll wing as they flee from hitmen. Eventually, they grow on each other, just as this gritty and quirky film grows on the viewer. "Gloria" tells a classic, and dare I say, heartwarming love story of an unlikely duo, but never becomes treacly or sentimental.Movie Review: Gloria Revisited
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this movie over 20 years ago and wanted to add it to my video library. Gena Rowlands was excellent as the "tough broad". I enjoyed watching it again and I'm a sucker for happy endings. I've seen Gena Rowlands in other movies, but her role in this movie has always stood out as one of her best roles. I would recommend this movie to anyone.Movie Review: WONDERFUL MOVIE
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of my all-time favorite movies. The remake with Sharon Stone has nothing on this one. The little boy was so cute. I thought they should have won Academy Awards!!!Movie Review: Gena Rowlands shines, but the plot stumbles
Summary: 4 Stars
This movie is worth watching for the pure joy of watching Gena Rowlands kicking butt and taking names. The movie starts out strong. The mafia closes in around a family who live down the hall from Gloria. The father works for the mafia but has been disclosing information to the FBI. As men with guns appear outside their apartment building and the family desperately realizes they are doomed, the mother convinces Gloria to take her son into her apartment so that he can be saved. The family is killed, and Gloria is left with a belligerent 6 year old she doesn't know what to do with. To complicate matters, she was working for the same people who killed the family, so by keeping the son alive, she jeopardizes her own life.
As she tries to decide what to do, the child rants and raves like an adult, proudly declaring "I am a man! I am a man! You can't tell me what to do" and angrily demanding to be returned to his father. Gloria considers leaving him to the mob, but then changes her mind when a car of hoodlums shows up to take him. She starts dragging him all over the city trying to find a plan of escape, and eventually she decides she loves the child.
Here's where the plot grows thin. Gloria's lines are natural, strong, effortless, but the child's voice oscillates between that of an actual child (but not one who cries or feels sad for his parents), that of an adult (but with a bizarre Street Car Named Desire machismo), and sometimes, that of some sort of narrator. His character didn't ring true, and so the maternal love story between him and Gloria doesn't end up feeling real. Despite this, Gena Rowlands is able to carry the movie.
At the end of the movie is a strikingly cheesy slow motion running-to-safety scene. A slow motion running scene from Cassavettes, founding father of American independent cinema? I can only hope to blame the cultural void that was the 1980s for that error of judgement.
Movie Review: Gloria Saves the Day - not the Knight
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an Oscar-caliber performance by Gena Rowlands. This woman takes no stuff and takes on the mob when they are after a disk that a little boy is in possession of. Having already wiped out the kids family (Because his accountant father ripped them off), they don't just want the disk they want the kid, who was in the house during the massacre, silenced.
I think that perhaps the flick "The PRofessional," ripped off the plot of this movie, replacing the young boy with a little girl. At any rate, let's not digress: the young Puerto Rican child John Adames cannot act a lick. He's precocious and cute, but he has a head the size of Soldier Field.
Here are some tidbits to chew on: the accountant is a white man married to a gorgeous Latina. They have a beautiful teenaged daugther and a younger one, all who get wiped out. As the bad guys converge on the apartment they live in, this man singles out the little boy and gives him the disk. He tells the little boy to "always be a man" and then sends the kid off while he and the rest of the family get butchered. What was that all about? Why didn't they have a phone in the house? Why didn't they try to escape to the crowded streets below as a unit?
Not only that, but when Gloria and the kid are on the run, she is wondering why she doesn't just dump the kid. The young boy is falling in love with her because he's seen her shoot five or six guys defending HIM. They move from being two people who cannot stand one another to mother and son. Although the the kid has the acting skills of a giant mouse on crack, Gena Rowlands more than compensates with streetwise toughness, gentle compassion when need be, and an undying commitment to keeping this young kid alive. A must-see.