Just saw this on DVD. Unbelievably bad, and what a wasted opportunity. Visually it's gorgeous, but the script should have been burned--continuity problems, pacing problems, credibility problems, laughably bad dialog, no characters you care about in the least, it's hard to imagine that a great novelist like William Kennedy and Mario Puzo and Coppola himself were all writers on it and it turned out this bad (maybe that was the problem--too many cooks). What's particularly tragic, in no particular order, is not only the waste of the visuals, but an unbelievable cast (more depth in a cast than 95% of the films I've ever seen), though the leads, except Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne, are weak (Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Gregory Hines, Loretta McKee, et al were all to see better days--and James Remar is just scene-chewing bizarre as Dutch Schultz), and a really compelling real-life story, setting, and cast of real-life characters. I guess it's worth watching for the spectacle of seeing a film with that much going for it still go horribly wrong, but it's a pretty agonizing experience. I've heard this one has become more appreciated over time--that doesn't bode well for the evolution of the human race. Me, I watched it, and it was easy to see how this one caused Coppola to go bankrupt.
Review of The Cotton Club
