It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Of my all-time favourite films.I just read a splendid review,her, by 'noreaster13,' and I highly recommend it, as what they say, is exactly what I would.Hollywood (as an unspoken rule), rarely puts mature women (over 40) into lead roles, and thank goodness for Ms. Rowlands and her husband, the late director, John Cassavetes, for creating this tribute to Ms. Rowlands talent, and to and for those mature women, who are silenced in a culture that has, and still does - favour youth.Shameful to do do, because, I always felt, as the saying goes, 'youth is wasted on the young.'Ms. Rowland's Gloria Swenson - 'a nod to Gloria Swanson,' as a reporter says of Gloria, is a woman who lived her earlier days as arm-candy, to the men of the underworld, and, smartly realised that, as she 'd get older, she'd have no one, but, herself, to be there for her.She's over the 40-year mark, and has undoubtedly been replaced, but, still maintains a cordial relationship with those men, and their associates.Doing so, means fading - into the background, and - if lucky, they might, perhaps, throw her a bone, as it were, on the rare-occasion she needs a little help getting by, but, Gloria is, above all, a self-reliant woman, not school-smart, but very street-smart, and that and her wits has gotten he by.Thrown into this solitary existence - one she describes as 'having my friends, my apartment, and my cat,' is the 6-year old neighbour's boy, Phil Dawn, the son of a mob accountant, who, has crossed the code of silence, and is now a dead man - literally.In an early scene, after Gloria and Phil (the 'kid') escape down a staircase, Gloria - alone on a street corner, with Phil, realises the predicament she's now in, and says, 'the guys who killed your family, are friends of mine.''My feet are falling off, I can't run anymore, what am I doing here?'And, with these words, she realises her isolation, and as a car full of those men, who they just escaped from come careening to a halt, aside Gloria and Phil, who say, they; 'got no issue with you, we just want the book, and the boy,' to which Gloria realises the truth; if she turns him over, he's dead.For what? Just being the son of the mob accountant? A 6-year old, who 'can't even speak English (of course, he can), and doesn't know anything?'Yes - just, because.With this exchange, she realises she's to make a choice, which will alter her future - if she's going to survive.She didn't look for being Phil's saviour, and Phil didn't ask, either, but, through circumstance, and fate, it is meant to be, and in order for them both to live, they must stay together.I've never seen the remake, and I know no one could step into the (high heeled) shoes of Gloria, which Ms. Rowlands embodies so beautifully.As the 2 become enmeshed in saving each others lives, one of my favourite lines is spoken by Phil, as a snooty hotel clerk refuses them a room; ''He don't know the score, he sees a dame like you, and a guy like me, he don't know.'This film - to paraphrase 'noreaster13,' is the result of 'adult filmmakers making a film for adults,' a rarity, today. It's gritty, it's not a connect-the dots' story, which is easily predictable.I highly recommend this film for those who haven't yet seen it, and even for those who have, such as myself..

I won't relate the storyline - it's all over the place here. Just trust me on this: GLORIA is a wonderful modern noir, full of kicks and energy and schtick. It belongs to its time and its setting - the 'not nice', hot, sweaty NYC of the late 70's - as much as any great Warner Bros. classic. And Gena Rowlands...oh, my. As with many a classic, there are flaws all over the place, from the murdering of the family in the beginning - dad and mom know what's going to happen and everybody just hangs around, tense and fearful? - to the adorable boy's fairly wretched performance. Doesn't matter. Rowlands takes this flick, straps it on her back, and runs. She is nothing short of sensational, as she was as well a brilliant actress. Too bad she limited herself to (mostly) her husband's films. But, they gave us this. And, if you need to learn how to ride a subway with attitude, order a cold beer, or treat a cabbie, watch and learn.

Gena Rowlands is Gloria, a friend of the mob in New York City. She lives in a shabby Bronx apartment house and is entertaining the six-year-old son of a neighboring family, John Adames, when the rest of the family -- a miscast Buck Henry as an FBI informant, his succulent Puerto Rican wife, their daughter, and their wizened abuelita -- are blown away by the goon squad. They need to kill Adames too. Those are the rules.The uncertain and somewhat guilty Rowlands, who hates kids, takes off with him. They are pursued from hotel to hotel, from train station to subway, by hit men. Gloria is a tough babe, though, and is always quickest on the draw, though rarely more than one step ahead of her executioners.It's hardly an unfamiliar armature. An urban person who has no use for children is suddenly saddled with one and must take care of him or her. In the course of many tribulations, they bond. The now-humanized rogue rides into the sunset with his new companion. Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid" is one of the more entertaining examples.This film, though, was directed by John Cassavetes, famous for his mostly improvised and impeccably dull slices of life. Please, God -- no more Zorbas.This is Cassavetes' most structured and conventional movie and, like Orson Welles' "The Stranger," it mostly succeeds in its attempted mixture of poetry and commercialism.Let me get the weaknesses out of the way. First of all, the Mafia not only want to blow away Buck Henry and his family; they also want the black notebook he's been keeping, the one labeled "MacGuffin." And Henry gives the book to his little BOY and tells him to keep it? Why? Almost all of the dialog sounds written and rehearsed but some is clearly made up on the spot. The impromptu lines come from the kid, which is a shame. It's bad enough that little Adames can't act, but for Cassavetes to urge him to improvise dialog almost turns into child abuse, especially when it comes out like, "Good-bye, you sucker, you little insect." And Buck Henry as the terrified family man about to squeal on the Mafia. How did he get the role? And the climactic scene has Adames running -- in slow motion -- towards an open-armed Rowland while the score tells us this is a happy ending, just in case we missed it.So much for the bad stuff. The rest is quirky -- and I don't mean that negatively. I'll just give examples from two scenes.(1) The mob shows up at Buck Henry's apartment and the halls echo with shotgun blasts. (Cassavetes doesn't show us the killings, just the family sitting around waiting to be slaughtered.) Now, in an "ordinary" action movie, the echoes would no sooner have died down than we would hear police sirens in the background. Not here. The hoods take their time poking around Henry's apartment while looking for the little black book. No hurry, folks. The police response time here is geared to reality, not to movie conventions.(2) Gloria barely manages to sneak out of another apartment house with the kid and the MacGuffin and must make a quick escape before the hit men reach her. In most movies, the pursued runs into the street, yells "Taxi!", and a cab screeches to an immediate halt in front of him. Or maybe there's one already waiting at the curb. Here, she calls out furiously and waves her hand and the taxis whiz by as they do in real life.Adames is no actor, as I've said, but at least he's not cute in any stereotypical way. And he never cries. The sentimentality is kept within reasonable bounds. Gena Rowlands is aging but still beautiful, even when cheaply made up and wearing sleazy pleated skirts and jackets that look like some kind of polyester or fake silk. She's thoroughly deglamorized, as she should be -- not old, but worn and a little frayed around the edges like a library book that has been checked out often. In the bad old days, Barbara Stanwyck could have waltzed through this part.Rowlands is from Wisconsin, though, and it shows in her speech. ("Cooled" instead of "cold.") It doesn't sound right when she attempts a New York accent but it doesn't exactly sound wrong either. It's kind of like a comfortable Mid-western pasture that's been littered with garbage and flaps of raggedy paper and planted with graffiti-laden signs.Boy, did Cassavetes have an eye for locations. Who else would have shot a scene of Newark's Penn Station IN Newark's Penn Station? The place isn't appallingly seedy, nor is it as clean and rococo as Moscow. It has nothing like Grand Central's Oyster Bar. It's simply uninteresting.I wish -- come to think of it -- that Cassavetes' script had been a little more taut, more thought-out and convincing, where the central relationship between Rowlands and Adames is concerned. The exchanges alternate between spiteful barbs and little understated caresses and are at no point believable.Still, this is an original work and well worth catching.

This film certainly has the gritty look and feel of an urban thriller of the 70s, and it's highlights are the street scenes, many shot from a distance to avoid real New Yorkers staring at the actors or the cameras. Real people walk past the actors completely oblivious to who they are or what's going on and it adds immeasurably to the realism of the film.Sadly, that's about the only positive thing I have to say about this film. I'm frankly surprised that this film comes from a director with as distinguished a reputation as John Cassavetes. Having said that, I'm not too familiar with Cassavetes' work with a director so can't form an opinion on whether that reputation is deserved.Anyway, what's wrong with this film? Firstly, the acting between the two leads is pretty poor. Gena Rowlands was a journeyman actress at best and really doesn't possess the acting skills or presence to carry a film. John Adames as the kid she spirits away from the mob is just plain bad, there's no disguising the fact. He's not helped, either, by the lines he's given to speak as, more often than not, they're words that no kid would speak in such a situation. On top of that, he seems remarkably unmoved by the fact that his entire family has been wiped out.The other main faults for my money are that the musical score is intrusive and overwrought, rising to dramatic crescendos at wholly inappropriate moments, and the plot as a whole really doesn't hang together. And that ending is just horrible and overly sentimental. Cassavetes has failed to arouse any real concern for the characters throughout the preceding two hours, so seeing them reunited in the way he has written just doesn't work at any level other than making it look like the ending of some hokey TV movie