The Pope of Greenwich Village

Ok I got a doozy for you. 

My boss is always throwing movies out there and he has strange taste. He’s from a different time (late stage boomer) and he’s constantly suggesting these movies from the 80s that are blind spots for me. 

To Live and Die in LA was one (amazing) and Ron Howard’s Night Shift (still haven’t seen it) is another. 

I was a kid in the 80s and so all the serious non-kid friendly movies passed me by. Which means that I basically missed Mickey Rourke’s career. 

To me he’s the guy in Iron Man 2, Sin City and Randy the Ram. Oh and he could have made something as a heavy in the the remake of Get Carter if it had not been a Stallone vehicle. 

So that’s how we end up streaming The Pope of Greenwich Village which is somehow actually streaming on Amazon Prime.

So what is this? It’s Italian Cliches the movie. It’s not quite a parody, at least, no one intended to make a parody. But it’s also not the great crime New York movie it wants to be. It’s like if Martin Scorsese’s second-cousin woke up one day and said, “I could do that.”  

Rourke is a waiter who dresses like a mob boss and has the hottest girlfriend in the world, Darryl Hannah. But he’s also got an ex-wife and crazy debt and a needy kid brother (who is actually his cousin because they’re Italians). 

The cousin (Eric Roberts) gets him fired and then gets him to go along with a burglary that puts them in the cross hairs of the cops and the local mob boss Bed Bug Eddie (Burt Young). 

And you can see where this is going. Except, it never quite gets there and it never says exactly what it wants to say and then it ends on a bizarre turn that doesn’t work at all.

And, and, and I think I kind of love this movie as much because it’s a big misfire.

There is a burglary in this movie that gave me so much respect for directors like Michael Mann who throw heists and burglaries around in their movies all the time. You think it must be easy to direct a scene like that and then you watch this and see how badly it can be directed and you realize how talented some people really are. 

It’s like when people show you shots from weak Spielberg movies and you can see just how much time and effort he puts into everything and how good it all looks even when the movie itself is not a classic.

As for the acting it’s all over the place. 

Roberts turns the dial so far past 10 that the only person who could come close to him for screen ham is Nic Cage.

He also plays the weakest wise guy I have ever seen in a movie. Watching it I said to myself, “oh here’s why DeNiro, Pacino, and Caan all turned this down.”

No one wants to play that weak and I’m betting no one wanted to play opposite someone playing that weak. 

Burt Young and M. Emmet Walsh are safely ensconced in their usual just show up and look like lowlifes phase, Daryl Hannah is in a tragic romance movie, Kenneth McMilan is doing fine work in a movie about an old guy trying to make it and get out with One Last Score and Geraldine Page is playing the coldest, meanest New York mama you have ever seen.

She got 8 minutes of screen time and an Oscar nomination. Just wow. 

You know what this movie is? This is the movie I imagined the character Vincent Chase making as his big first hit movie in the world of Entourage. 

The tag line there was “I am Queens Boulevard.” And even though you didn’t see the movie you knew Chase was in a Mean Streets knock off picture that wasn’t nearly as good as he hoped it would be. 

Mickey Rourke can relate. He’s miles better than the material. But he’s saddled with Eric Roberts (who was almost fired and should have been) and he’s stuck with plot points that never go anywhere and he’s keeps delivering the goods in a movie that just doesn’t respect him. 

Watch him and you won’t wonder why everyone said he wasn’t just the next DeNiro or Pacino but that he was the next Brando! 

That wild ending I was talking about. Well, there was a plan and Rourke is in the middle of walking away as clean as bad kid on Christmas morning and then Roberts shows up and blows it to hell and then the movie just walks away (literally) with all of that. 

It’s this microcosm of what’s wrong with the whole movie in one big dumb scene. 

Have you ever hated a movie you wanted to watch five or six more times? Cause I think that’s where I am tonight.