Gerald So (gso@optonline.net)
Mon, 26 Jul 1999 16:32:25 -0400
Hello, all.
After reading a flood of SMALL
VICES comments on various lists and newsgroups, I stand by by
initial favorable review. Parker's script was good (not the
best, but good), bringing forth more glimpses of the real
Spenser than the TV series ever did. Because of the script,
Mantegna played a better, grittier Spenser than Urich
did.
Yes, Shiek-Mahmud Bey lacked
presence and laughed too easily, and Marcia Gay Harden lacked
heat. It was an ambitious attempt to get Spenser right,
hindered by the limitations of a commercial cable channel.
All things considered, an decent job.
The movie's biggest flaw
was neither suspicious casting, nor suspicious locations, but
bad concept. Reading the comments of director Markowitz and
actors Mantegna and Harden, I could tell they'd gotten
Spenser wrong: "A throwback to Hammett and Chandler," they
said, "a movie with '50s feel, yet definitely set in the
90s."
SMALL VICES had an identity
crisis. Right down to the background music. On the overplayed
promos the music was fast, upbeat--just right for a 90s,
spine-tingling suspense thriller. David Shire's score from
the actual movie was an easy-going riff which, according to
one viewer, was rooted in 1952.
On A&E's Behind the Scenes
web page, Parker said, "This is not my movie, this is *our*
movie," meaning SMALL VICES was a collaboration among several
people who--it seems to me--were on different wavelenths. Not
the recipe for a tight, consistent, flowing film.
So, like the movie itself--my opinion
is mixed, slanted positively only because I am a Spenser
fan.
Gerald
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