Thanks for the memories!

Overrated

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Vincent LaMarca's job is to arrest killers, but this job is different. The suspect he is tracking is his own son. As a cop, LaMarca must bring the accused to justice. As a father he must try and help his son. However LaMarca owes his son more than that as he walked out on him and he is also plagued by his own bad memories of his father and how he was executed for murder.This film starred: Robert De Niro, James Franco & Frances McDormand.City By The Sea was released in 2002. When I saw the trailers for this film I thought it was going to be really good. With a great actor like De Niro and an up-coming star in James Franco I was really expecting good things from this movie. However, in my opinion this film didn't deliver. It was OK but it bored me some parts and apart from the end scene I wasn't as moved as what I had expected from this film. I don't recommend this film because you will probably be left disappointed. ***/***** Could be worse.

For me this was a disappointment, and rarely am I disappointed by a De Niro film. It's just a standard nothing new film. This is just a routine cop drama, with the always competent De Niro in a not so tough role as a cop, who's very family orientated. Now just having realized his junkie son (Franco) may of been the murderous hand behind the death of a cop, he must find him. Really this is just old territory, in a painfully trite cop drama, the new acting great, Franco, delivering a sincere and powerful performance, as the fleeing son, running scared. Did he or not pull the trigger, or is there more than a story to it. We really don't care, or we have an itch to know, to get our story's worth. Seriously, Franco is the only real reason for warranting a view, while Eliza Dunkshu was strong too as the girlfriend. A kill ninety minute film in the land of ordinary that does try, by evidently fails, as just a sad tale of mislead youth. Do watch for Franco, though.

This is a story about ugly America and ugly Americans whose incessant greed and self-interest have caused their karma to destroy them and their families. At the center is a heartless and two-faced career NY police officer who makes his living busting everyday people for average offenses while at the same time writing off the murders committed by his own father and son as "mistakes".What we see is ecological karma at work as Mother Earth Gaia or perhaps even Jehovah punishes those who squander precious resources. The central family is typical of New Yorkers with heavy expenses and of the mentality that to have everything is the minimum expected. In one way or another this destroys three successive generations.The director is attempting to portray victimization as something that passes on down, but the plain fact is that each of these generations created their own issues.What I see as different from most, is to look at how much money and time society is forced to spend on these people. All the money made by the husband and wasted by the wife and child to begin with, add to it the expenses for a number of murder investigations, destruction of property, so on and so forth. What makes this dysfunctional family, this tiny group of selfish people, worth any of it? The resources and money that this family has used up would be enough to feed every person in some small countries for years. Better than 95% of the world does not live in a house like this family did, and does not drive cars like they do or eat or dress like they do.Yet we are supposed to find something rewarding about all this. I think not.

CITY BY THE SEA stars Robert DeNiro and was directed by Michael Caton Jones whose previous big films include MEMPHIS BELLE and THE JACKAL . Somewhat strangely it only received a very limited release in Britain as it sank without trace at the box office . In fact I'm not even sure it got a cinema distribution deal such was its obscurity . Bare in mind however that both DeNiro and Caton Jones best known work were way in the past with the actor now known as someone appearing in cameo roles in forgettable movies and the director being known as someone who came from a working class Scottish background who made good , even though very few Scots could name more than two films he's directed As you might expect CITY BY THE SEA is something you might pick up at the DVD store , watch it one evening then by the time you're having breakfast the next morning you'll have forgotten ever seeing it . . It's certainly not terrible but neither is it more passable than being mediocre , it's a routine thriller that's far too routine . DeNiro plays a cop called Vince LaMarca whose father was executed for murder and now his son is on the run after being accused of killing a cop . Much of the emotional baggage of LaMarca goes totally unexplored and you'd never know of this family history until one of the characters occasionally brings it up via dialogue . In fact if LaMarca was written as female then you'd honestly believe that this was yet another variation of a TVM made for women