As the new Robert De
Niro film demonstrates, even so ostensibly simple and relatively ancient a form
(at least for the cinema) as the cop flick, even in the blockbuster blossom
time, possesses the potential to be more than mysteries, manhunts, and
shootouts. Based on a true story, City by
the Sea examines not only the details of a particular police investigation
in its present time frame, but also another crime in the past. Moreover, the
picture employs its subjects of crime and detection not to solve some puzzle or
show some police heroics, but to deal with the heavy burdens of guilt and negotiate
the tangled wilderness of family relationships.
The movie introduces its title location with smeary old
films of a beach resort, accompanied by some schmaltzy old songs, all
ironically intended to show the difference between past and present Long Beach,
Long Island. The prosperous seaside community of resort hotels and beach clubs
(which I remember well from my youth) has apparently fallen on evil times. Its
decayed boardwalk now represents only the memories of leisurely strolls in the
sunshine, the enclosure for its carousel now echoes only with the wind swirling
through its shattered windows, while the once crowded beach is populated only
by seagulls. The City by the Sea has become a slum, and its population appears
to consist entirely of junkies and their suppliers.
When
a New York City detective named Vincent LaMarca (De Niro) investigates the
murder of a drug dealer known as Picasso (so named, perhaps, for the
picturesque tattoos adorning his face); the case leads him back to Long Beach,
his old hometown. He had left the place many years before, after a bitter and
angry divorce, abandoning his son Joey (James Franco), now a grown man and a
stone junkie. Involved in a drug buy that turned first violent, then fatal,
Joey is also the primary suspect in Picasso’s death.
Because of his personal involvement in the case, and a
special history that engages the attention of the media, LaMarca’s superiors
remove him from the investigation. His partner, Reg, takes over; and when
another drug dealer shoots Reg, Joey gets the blame. LaMarca, fully aware of
how his colleagues deal with cop killers, desperately attempts to bring his son
in before the police find him. His pursuit of Joey leads through numerous
difficulties to a climactic confrontation with his own childhood, his own sense
of filial connection, his own sad family life.
The story explores the meaning of a background that
LaMarca has been trying to deny and forget ever since he left the City by the
Sea. He is the victim of his own life, his own past, suffering from a confusion
of guilt and shame over the deeds of his father, Angelo LaMarca, who was
executed for a notorious crime when Vincent was only a child — the bungled
kidnaping of an infant whom Angelo more or less accidentally killed. The notion
of the sins of the father blighting the lives of his children and their
children — a concept right out of Greek tragedy — amazingly, actually
worked itself out in Vincent LaMarca’s life, which shows, perhaps, that those
Greeks knew a thing or two about human nature and the terrible potential of
guilt.
LaMarca’s
attempts to forget his past seem almost comical at times, especially when his
steady girlfriend, Michelle (Frances McDormand), learns all at once that he was
married before, has a son and a grandson, and that his father was executed.
Coming to terms with Joey forces him to confront his painful childhood as the
son of a murderer, his own history of abandonment and alienation, his failures
as a father. Searching for his son, returning to Long Beach, forces him to
return to a time and place he’s been trying to escape for most of his adult
life. In the search, he finally comes to understand something of his own
failures and to acknowledge his own guilt.
Unlike
most cop flicks, City by the Sea chiefly works and succeeds through character and atmosphere, with the squalid
decay of the location providing its moral and emotional center. (If the Long
Beach of today really looks like the place in the movie, the city fathers
should either apologize or sue). Both literally and metaphorically, the picture
begins and ends there, in the wreckage of holiday dreams and the failures of
hope and innocence. There, coming to terms with his son and himself, LaMarca,
who constantly talks about choosing one’s course in life, learns another sort
of choice: how to forgive his son, himself, and perhaps even his own father.
In
City by the Sea, De Niro — who
probably works in too many movies these days, and has played so many cops he
should be commissioner by now — displays the talent, skill, and dedication
that long ago established him as one of the finest actors of his generation. He
makes his character into a fully credible human being who lives a consciously
drab and controlled life and, despite the inherent melodrama of the film,
speaks and behaves in a deceptively ordinary manner. De Niro establishes a
remarkable presence, and the reality he creates does justice to the pain and
truth of Vincent LaMarca’s story.
City by the Sea,
starring Robert De Niro, James Franco, Frances McDormand, Eliza Dushku, William
Forsythe, George Dzundza, Patti Lupone, Anson Mount, Brian Tarantina, John
Doman, Nestor Serrano, Cyrus Farmer, Jay Boryea; based on the article “Mark of
a Murderer,” by Michael McAlary; screenplay by Ken Hixon; directed by Michael
Caton-Jones. Cinemark Tinseltown; Loews Webster; Pittsford Plaza Cinema; Regal
Culver Ridge; Regal Eastview; Regal Henrietta.
This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2002.
