Clinical crime film defies handbook cool

Clinical crime film defies handbook cool

By Dini S. Djalal

JAKARTA (JP): City of Industry, John Irvin's new thriller, has
a title that can at best be described as clinical.

The title suits the film. In this Tarantino age of
hipper-than-thou gangsters more preoccupied with Madonna's lyrics
than with committing crime, City of Industry's straightforward
narrative stands apart. The dialog, written by Ken Solarz, is
spare and concise; there are few of the obscure, but ultimately
middle-class, cultural references and quirky mannerisms which now
weigh down "independent" films.

Expecting an immediate entry to the mythical world of cool?
Then try the next box office as City of Industry is not a do-it-
yourself handbook to the ways of the street. It is, in essence, a
plain movie. Among the lifestyle statements now churned out by
graduates of both Hollywood and the Sundance Film Festival (is
there still a difference?) this low-key modesty is increasingly
endangered.

The modesty is a gamble, as Generation X (and Y and Z) fast
forwards between hyperkinetic music videos and consciously
iconoclastic film-school productions. City of Industry,
meanwhile, is focused filmmaking. Its camerawork is slow, intent,
with few forays into technical cleverness. The acting is
undecorated, unfettered by moments of hysteria or melodrama.

The plot is simple -- a heist goes down, eventually so do the
felons, save for the survivors who scramble to finish each other
off. In classical cinematic terms, the story unfolds with
brevity. There are few extraneous scenes, those which fail to add
depth to the character or narrative, and the film strides from
scene to scene with composed pace, thanks to compact editing. Yet
those fed on MTV and/or Hollywood special effects, action, and
gloss, may see City of Industry as dragging on its conventional
feet.

But what elegant feet, especially when ambling with the
unforgettable Harvey Keitel. Keitel plays Roy Egan, the elder
brother of Lee (Timothy Hutton), a conman who, with Roy and two
other local hoods, plans to loot a jewelry store. This gang of
four is ad hoc; Roy strolls in from Minneapolis at Lee's behest.
The movie opens with Roy's journey through industrial America's
winding highways.

Shot in black and white with the camera swaying to the rhythm
of Massive Attack's hypnotic Three, these opening scenes of life
on the road are arrestingly beautiful. The highway footage
reappears again at the film's end, confirming that the miles of
expanding asphalt symbolize the hardness and conformity of
industrial life.

When the screen changes to color, we are in Los Angeles
watching Lee steal a car. Then one by one, introductions are made
to Lee's partners in crime: Jorge (Wade Dominguez), a father of
two who needs the heist money so his family can live well when he
serves time for a weapons charge; and Skip (Stephen Dorff), a
twig of a brat swathed in leather rock-star gear and way too much
bad attitude.

In contrast, Roy has no attitude. He's a straight-up thief
who, like the movie, executes his craft with a clinical eye. He
wastes few words and goes about his business with neither scowl
nor snigger. When he smiles, and there's a great brotherly scene
of him and Lee in the swimming pool grinning for all their worth,
it's genuine. Roy knows no pretense, other than the necessity of
keeping cool in order to be able to watch his back.

Eventually, as usually happens in the heist-gone-wrong genre,
all Roy does is watch his back. But as Roy stalks L.A.'s streets
in pursuit of his hunter, Keitel displays acting skills
unparalleled even by his wide repertoire. Keitel may have played
many gangsters in his twenty-odd-year career, from Martin
Scorsese's Mean Streets to Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, but he
acts taciturn Roy to perfection.

It's Oscar material. Keitel is electrifying throughout the
film's climax, where Roy finally wrestles his nemesis and resorts
to a painful deliberation that viewers will not soon forget.
There is an equally powerful scene where Roy struggles with his
rage in his hotel room, keeping his emotions in check even when
nobody's watching. He finally explodes and furniture flies across
the room, but his cigarette, perhaps the only companion he has
left, stays gripped between his fingers.

Modern fable

Well, that's not true. Roy ultimately finds a companion, and
his scenes with her (Famke Jannsen) are the worst in the film.
Former model Jannsen is picture-perfect, but even her long-limbed
beauty can't deflect attention from her self-conscious
performance. Jannsen is also given the film's worst lines and
scenes, particularly the film's atrocious cliched ending which
insults the story's integrity.

Because integrity is what carries City of Industry. It is
integrity to spin a tale without spinning into gimmicks. And
despite the lack of post-modern irreverence, City of Industry
tells a very modern fable.

Consider how Lee answers the query about how he got his
jewelry store information: "I bought it," he says. City of
Industry is not about back-alley bullies shooting off their big
mouths between scams. It's about, as the title indicates,
industry and the industrious. The film's criminals, like the
filmmakers, are smart, diligent and upfront, as if they are
exercising a work ethic no different than the rest of the
workforce.

Industrial expanse fittingly forms the backdrop to the
violence, hinting that crime is the city's dominant enterprise.
Irvin's crisp cinematography shows a city that never turns off
its lights -- how can it when the multicultural underworld works
around the clock. In City of Industry, crime, organized and
involving a cast of thousands, is what pulls the city together.

Here, crime is the one industry where everybody -- Caucasian,
Chinese, Hispanic, African-American -- can rise, and fall, on
equal footing. It's a political correctness that's not as hip or
fast talking as Irvin's more famous peers (think Tarantino and
Richard Linklater), but it's expressed by an objective eye that
is far more modern and relevant than a knowingly ironic script.