Word: mantegna
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...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...
...instant gesture and socially revealing incident went with a lifelong habit of recycling poses and motifs, patching them in. Thus he can be very deceptive: the image that seems the freshest product of observation turns out to have been used half a dozen times before. Degas copied everything from Mantegna to Mogul miniatures, and even the work of lesser painters than himself; an artist, he said, should not be allowed to draw so much as a radish without the constant habit of copying the Old Masters...
Whore is precisely the term the two men in the play use to describe themselves: they are not creators of films or even fans of films but enablers of films, and they pride themselves on letting projects advance or die based solely on commercial potential. Mantegna's character, so newly installed in executive splendor that his office furniture is still covered with painters' drop cloths, solemnly explains that a quarter-century in show business has given him a certain wisdom. The cardinal rule, he says, is not to accept percentages of net profit because there is never, ever...
...nominated script for The Verdict (1982), "forced on me the issue of plot." He acknowledged to friends that Glengarry was the first of his plays to have anything resembling a workable second act. But Speed-the-Plow has two huge holes in its narrative. First, the effort to persuade Mantegna's character to believe in the book takes place almost entirely offstage. Second, right up to the end it is impossible to tell whether the book is brilliance or bilge. If it is the former, then the ending is uncommercially tragic. If the latter, then the ending is a foregone...
...awkward, indecisive characterization seems calculated to help paper over those gaps and sustain suspense by keeping the audience from reaching conclusions. Thus the question "Can she act?" cannot be answered. The shrewdness in her performance is clear, but so, alas, is her thinking process: she lacks ease and naturalness. Mantegna, by contrast, superbly manages his character's clashing mental states. Silver is captivating, especially in a second-act tantrum that is equal parts rage, hurt, con-artist scam and genuine grief at a betrayal...