Word: mamet
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...DAVID Mamet must be an extremely busy man. Long a playwright (American Buffalo) and screenwriter (The Untouchables), last year he also became a director, filming his own screenplay for House of Games. Considering these activities and his myriad other projects (including some here at the American Repertory Theater), it's a wonder that he ever found time to write and direct Things Change. From the looks of things, he must have done it all on his lunch hour...
...film seems to have much of what one might expect from a David Mamet movie: a Chicago setting, smooth gangsters and solid performances by some of Mamet's usual players (in this case, Joe Mantegna and Robert Prosky). What it lacks is Mamet's usual taut, tricky plotting, unsentimental direction and compelling characters...
...Mamet is also famed for his dialogue, a distillation of the brazen, fast-talking, colorful speech of men (rarely women) motivated by avarice. His collaborator on the screenplay, Shel Silverstein, is known for his wonderfully subversive children's verse, as well as some scabrous poems for adults. One would think that between them they could come up with a wittier, juicier script than this...
...MAMET relishes these games of greed and deception, and he displays the casinos and the mobsters in all their garish glory. He presents a colorful parade of mob hierarchy, from obsequious, weasel-like underlings to laconic, imperious chieftains...
Ameche walks through the film with sad, bloodhound eyes and a bad hair piece meant to make him look 20 years younger--that is, 60, instead of 80. But he can do no wrong here--and neither can Mantegna or Prosky, who by now can surely play whatever roles Mamet writes for them in their sleep--and here they seem...