This has to be the bleakest movie ever made. Nothing I've seen comes close.
It lasts a mere 77 minutes but seems twice as long. Identically filmed tracking shots of the hit-man, Frank Bono, walking along grey winter Manhattan streets as dozens of storefronts pass monotonously behind him take up 20 minutes. There's one static shot of Bono, starting as a speck, walking towards us from a full city block away that doesn't end until he literally almost runs into the camera. Add to these, two prolonged scenes photographed from Bono's car as he trails the man he has contracted to murder. These scenes kill about a half hour, leaving 45 minutes.
From this you can subtract another 10 minutes during which Bono goes into a Greenwich Village nightclub and sits drinking at a bar while his prey hangs with a group at a table. In this sequence, the camera dwells mostly on a bongo-playing singer as he belts out two or three full-length beatnik songs, each as boringly dreadful – and pointless -- as the next.
During all of the above not a single word of dialogue is spoken. Over most of the above is a relentlessly despairing and repetitive narrative voiced by a raspy actor speaking in comic book gangsterese. He provides Bono's boilerplate backstory and what's going through his mind as he endlessly walks and drives the streets of the city. Many, many allusions to hot hands/cold hands.
So, now we're down to about a half hour of actual interaction and (dull) conversation between four (dull) characters, plus three (dull) killing sequences. The last shooting is filmed in the frigid Jamaica Bay wetlands during a perfectly bleak sideways-blowing snowstorm that is the perfectly bleak icing on the perfectly bleak cake.
I know, I know. The movie is meant to be gritty and grim. It's noir, right? But what's its point? What of value is the viewer supposed to glean from this?
It lasts a mere 77 minutes but seems twice as long. Identically filmed tracking shots of the hit-man, Frank Bono, walking along grey winter Manhattan streets as dozens of storefronts pass monotonously behind him take up 20 minutes. There's one static shot of Bono, starting as a speck, walking towards us from a full city block away that doesn't end until he literally almost runs into the camera. Add to these, two prolonged scenes photographed from Bono's car as he trails the man he has contracted to murder. These scenes kill about a half hour, leaving 45 minutes.
From this you can subtract another 10 minutes during which Bono goes into a Greenwich Village nightclub and sits drinking at a bar while his prey hangs with a group at a table. In this sequence, the camera dwells mostly on a bongo-playing singer as he belts out two or three full-length beatnik songs, each as boringly dreadful – and pointless -- as the next.
During all of the above not a single word of dialogue is spoken. Over most of the above is a relentlessly despairing and repetitive narrative voiced by a raspy actor speaking in comic book gangsterese. He provides Bono's boilerplate backstory and what's going through his mind as he endlessly walks and drives the streets of the city. Many, many allusions to hot hands/cold hands.
So, now we're down to about a half hour of actual interaction and (dull) conversation between four (dull) characters, plus three (dull) killing sequences. The last shooting is filmed in the frigid Jamaica Bay wetlands during a perfectly bleak sideways-blowing snowstorm that is the perfectly bleak icing on the perfectly bleak cake.
I know, I know. The movie is meant to be gritty and grim. It's noir, right? But what's its point? What of value is the viewer supposed to glean from this?