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.