Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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With all the necessary trappings, "Romeo is Bleeding" should be quintessential film noir. It is instead a dark and muddled mess with little style and even less interest. Borrowing heavily from past Film noir in everything from plot to music to costuming, director Peter Medak ("Salome", "The Krays") crosses the line from paying homage to being simply unoriginal...
...movie's plot is the rehashed tale of the good cop gone bad. In this case, Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman) is the Queens police sergeant who cannot resist the temptations of the underworld. Like a child at a candystore window, Jack, in doing surveillance work, has longingly spied on the blandly depicted lifestyles of the rich and infamous. Instead of trading in his badge for true mobster glory, Jack decides to be a mob informer by remaining on the force. The whereabouts of protected witnesses is big business as Jack begins working for Don Falcone (Roy Scheider...
...story's odd pacing does not refresh the already-tired plot. The movie either drags through long uneventful sequences or spurts with confusing fast-paced scenes. Jack narrates the film in voice-over and, like that all-too familiar friend who can never quite capture the excitement of a story in its retelling, he manages to bury a potentially interesting tale under unnecessary details and tangents. In addition, the setting is both murky and disconcertingly dark. Medak takes a literal approach to film noir everything is bathed in black. As a result, dialogue and activity are lost in the shadows...
...certainly sold the movie to gays; Philadelphia has been the hot topic for a month, and nobody wants to miss out on the dish du jour. Cocktail parties are peppered with objections to the plot: Why does Andy Beckett (the Hanks character) get no more than a chaste kiss from his lover (Antonio Banderas)? Why is his case rejected by 10 lawyers, when even a simpleton knows that the ACLU, the LAMBDA defense fund and many other groups would jump at the chance of a precedent-setting suit? Why is Andy's huge family so conspicuously loving, so unanimously supportive...
...Hollywood movies, have always been the privilege of heterosexuals. Anything else was a threat, a jolt, anathema to the theology of movie fantasy. In 1936, when Samuel Goldwyn filmed These Three, from Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour, he removed the accusation of lesbianism from the plot. In 1947's Crossfire, RKO changed the homophobia theme to anti- Semitism. Interracial tolerance was in the air; homoeroticism may have lurked under every gruff bonding between cowboys, gangsters or G.I.s, but as for gay love, Hollywood dared not speak its name...