I know well this low-budget, badly-made, crazily violent V nonsense that you meet in video stores, so dusty on a deserted shelf, or find on TV always late at night, without many ads during it. Thank God, this time it wasn't that nonsense, and surprisingly it got a meaning as well.
Between 1990 and 2000, Hollywood mob movies used to be nothing but Martin Scorsese' historical pieces like (Goodfellas - 1990) and (Casino - 1995), the shoot'm up twisted fares like (Snatch - 2000), and the spoofs (Jane Austen's Mafia! - 1998). Now, (This Thing of Ours) is just a humble movie that doesn't have the true stories, the stars, or the great factors, yet it's surely still watchable.
It's a nice time. I liked the structure of this script, it's solid. The idea of the heist was truly wild. The soundtrack was primitive yet a bit interesting. Although most of the cast are the minor actors of Scorsese' movies, but Oh My God they did so well, especially Frank Vincent who fitted in his role finely as the boss. Some of the rest did BAD. And of course I'm talking about guys like the one who played the role of the police officer, now what a criminal! This guy looked like someone who escaped from the audience after torturing them in his high school's play (and it's better for you pal to continue running!). While Christian Maelen was the one who looked charismatic the most, the 3 leads weren't the best actors altogether, delivering deadly usual work. However, I can't blame them fully, since it's not about acting in the first place. The whole deal is about the heist, and its consequences, not about the deep characters or something of this sort!
Some points bothered me. I mean what was the need to see that haughty businessman got beaten in his office for money that he didn't pay?! I think we all know, even from other movies, that these guys aren't joking about being rough, so it's not a thing to design a couple of scenes just to assure it!
Plus, there was no style at all. And I'm not talking about being highly arty, but the axiomatic things. The artistic personality of the movie is so poor. The camera-work got all the time an easy way to do all the matters, without making a fine suspense or leading certain feeling. I felt usual, sometimes low, TV all over it. Simply it got nothing to embody anything.
While the dialogue was nice and natural, I just felt something wrong with the way most of the characters were shown. Do these Italian-American still look like this? Because if Scorsese is right, then these people are still talking and dealing exactly the same since the 1970s! In a word, the stereotypes were just PURE and MANY!
.. And that's why James Caan got to be this old-fashioned, board, paralyzed godfather. He maybe knew that there was nothing that new. So he got to be at least special. In fact, the presence of Caan is the only coup de maitre that this movie achieves, not only for winning his name on the poster, and maybe selling the whole movie due to it, but also for the way his persona was used; since Sonny Corleone himself became, in this movie's world, that helpless non-respected old news.
The last scene was an epitome of this movie's real condition. It's meaningful, but without very much depths. It's dramatically interesting, but with so modest TV-ish carrying out. And its acting was between good and half good! Well, this is exactly the mistake that this movie does; putting a bit promising stuff in so clumsy hands. The crisis of that lead could have been something more attractive whereas he would live without friends anymore, or even allies if he got out. But sure this is something to watch in any other movie but this!
It was about a successful heist, then beating the police, the enemies, and the moral choice itself. I loved that it got a meaning anyway about doing the perfidy to be trusted, where family and friends - in the new mafia's, rather the new age's, laws - aren't needed as the money, or with the money, namely the movie's rule of "no connections". But I believe that the true no-connections that this movie had was between its story and any artistic embodiment whatsoever. So clearly "this thing of them" needed a lot to be more sophisticated and glossy.
Between 1990 and 2000, Hollywood mob movies used to be nothing but Martin Scorsese' historical pieces like (Goodfellas - 1990) and (Casino - 1995), the shoot'm up twisted fares like (Snatch - 2000), and the spoofs (Jane Austen's Mafia! - 1998). Now, (This Thing of Ours) is just a humble movie that doesn't have the true stories, the stars, or the great factors, yet it's surely still watchable.
It's a nice time. I liked the structure of this script, it's solid. The idea of the heist was truly wild. The soundtrack was primitive yet a bit interesting. Although most of the cast are the minor actors of Scorsese' movies, but Oh My God they did so well, especially Frank Vincent who fitted in his role finely as the boss. Some of the rest did BAD. And of course I'm talking about guys like the one who played the role of the police officer, now what a criminal! This guy looked like someone who escaped from the audience after torturing them in his high school's play (and it's better for you pal to continue running!). While Christian Maelen was the one who looked charismatic the most, the 3 leads weren't the best actors altogether, delivering deadly usual work. However, I can't blame them fully, since it's not about acting in the first place. The whole deal is about the heist, and its consequences, not about the deep characters or something of this sort!
Some points bothered me. I mean what was the need to see that haughty businessman got beaten in his office for money that he didn't pay?! I think we all know, even from other movies, that these guys aren't joking about being rough, so it's not a thing to design a couple of scenes just to assure it!
Plus, there was no style at all. And I'm not talking about being highly arty, but the axiomatic things. The artistic personality of the movie is so poor. The camera-work got all the time an easy way to do all the matters, without making a fine suspense or leading certain feeling. I felt usual, sometimes low, TV all over it. Simply it got nothing to embody anything.
While the dialogue was nice and natural, I just felt something wrong with the way most of the characters were shown. Do these Italian-American still look like this? Because if Scorsese is right, then these people are still talking and dealing exactly the same since the 1970s! In a word, the stereotypes were just PURE and MANY!
.. And that's why James Caan got to be this old-fashioned, board, paralyzed godfather. He maybe knew that there was nothing that new. So he got to be at least special. In fact, the presence of Caan is the only coup de maitre that this movie achieves, not only for winning his name on the poster, and maybe selling the whole movie due to it, but also for the way his persona was used; since Sonny Corleone himself became, in this movie's world, that helpless non-respected old news.
The last scene was an epitome of this movie's real condition. It's meaningful, but without very much depths. It's dramatically interesting, but with so modest TV-ish carrying out. And its acting was between good and half good! Well, this is exactly the mistake that this movie does; putting a bit promising stuff in so clumsy hands. The crisis of that lead could have been something more attractive whereas he would live without friends anymore, or even allies if he got out. But sure this is something to watch in any other movie but this!
It was about a successful heist, then beating the police, the enemies, and the moral choice itself. I loved that it got a meaning anyway about doing the perfidy to be trusted, where family and friends - in the new mafia's, rather the new age's, laws - aren't needed as the money, or with the money, namely the movie's rule of "no connections". But I believe that the true no-connections that this movie had was between its story and any artistic embodiment whatsoever. So clearly "this thing of them" needed a lot to be more sophisticated and glossy.