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QUICK TAKE:
Drama: Lies threaten to unravel a working-class family on New York's City Island in the Bronx.
PLOT:
The Rizzo family lives on New York's City Island in the Bronx. Vince (ANDY GARCIA) works as a correctional officer at a nearby prison, but secretly idolizes Marlon Brando and dreams of becoming an actor. He takes acting classes on the side where he's taught by Michael (ALAN ARKIN) and is a scene partner with Molly (EMILY MORTIMER), with whom he strikes up a friendship. Vince is too embarrassed to tell his often-angry wife, Joyce (JULIANNA MARGULIES), who works as a receptionist when she is not smoking, drinking, and browbeating Vince.
Vince and Joyce are parents to Vivian (DOMINIK GARCIA-LORIDO) and Vince Jr. (EZRA MILLER). Vivian is a college student who has recently been expelled from the university and lost her scholarship for smoking pot on school grounds. She has turned to stripping as a means to get the necessary money to return to school once her suspension ends. Vince Jr., meanwhile, is secretly attracted to the large girls at his high school. He regularly surfs Internet pornography that feature scantily clad women of rather large size. All are closet smokers, too, and hide their addiction from one another.
One day, Vince brings home a young man named Tony (STEVEN STRAIT), who he sees is a laborer who will help on putting a new bathroom in return for room and board. Tony is really Vince's son from a previous relationship - a child and a relationship Vince has never told his family about.
OUR TAKE: 6.5 out of 10
"City Island" is a good movie that comes dangerously close to being undone by the actors' need to attempt authentic "New Yawk" accents. It's a movie about a working-class, Bronx-area family whose main job is to bust each other's chops regarding matters of love, money, fidelity, employment, education, and each other. When they scream, the "Youze's" and the "Ayyyys" are thrown around and it's like you're back in "Welcome Back Kotter" purgatory. Fortunately, the movie has many winning small moments where the yelling is toned down, and some real emotions and genuine laughs get to be played out.
Andy Garcia plays Vince Rizzo, an affable corrections officer (don't call him a "prison guard") who dreams of being an actor. In fact, he is so committed to his craft that he takes drama classes on the side, but is too embarrassed to tell his blue-collar wife, Joyce (Julianna Margulies), for fear of reprisal.
Joyce is certainly a force to be reckoned with. She's prone to yelling fits and emotional outbursts, even when the moment doesn't call for it. For instance, Vince asks her to prepare the family a "special dinner" one night and she starts screaming that "Ayyyyyy, aren't all the dinners I make for Youzes special?!"
It's family week for Vince. His daughter, Vivian (Dominik Garcia-Lorida) is home from college on break, and he has just discovered that a son he fathered out of wedlock years earlier has been moved to his cell block. Vince manages to convince the court to release Tony (Steven Strait) into his custody. Because he has hidden Tony's identity from the family (and from Tony) for years, Vince plays it off that the man is a contractor who has agreed to help him install a new bathroom in return for free room and board.
But matters start to become complicated when Joyce starts to suspect that Tony is having an affair with his friend, Molly (Emily Mortimer), who is just his scene partner from class; Joyce becomes sexually attracted to the often shirtless Tony; and Vince aces his first audition for a role in a new Martin Scorsese movie. It all comes together in a climactic scene that is highly contrived. But, by that point in the film, the "Three's Company"-like coincidences and misunderstandings have all piled up to such an extent, that we the audience accept the convergence of plots and subplots and crave resolution.
Directed and written by Raymond De Felitta, "City Island" doesn't reach for any greater truths other than the importance of following one's bliss and being truthful to the people around you. It doesn't quite work as a complete piece. There's a subplot involving Vince and Joyce's teenage son being obsessed with large women to the point that he surfs the Internet for chubby porn that seems lifted from a whole other movie. But there is a command of setting and tone here that is quite admirable.
De Felitta could have turned the film into a sexual farce, as the masculine Strait could have plowed through the film like Nick Nolte in "Down and Out in Beverly Hills," using sex as an awakening tool. That doesn't happen. With the family basically being about a bunch of angry characters, you'd expect many scenes to devolve into threats of violence. But they don't. The characters yell and holler at one another. But they really do care, even if they can't be truthful with each other for one minute.
I also enjoyed Mortimer as the one major outsider in the film. She is a calming presence in the pic, and it's nice to see a relationship between a married character and an unmarried character of opposite sexes that stays on a friendship level. "City Island" is definitely a nice place to visit, whether in a theater or eventually on DVD. It rates a solid 6.5 out of 10. (T. Durgin)
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