Pretty Good

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Some well known, not necessarily brilliant, actors are collected to stroke a neophyte director's ego in a very tedious and boring film that is a direct steal from Visconti's "Rocco and His Brothers," right down to the soundtrack. Only there is nothing relevant about what is said, other than that there is corruption everywhere. C'mon, let's get a fresh idea or two before stealing from a classic. Charleze Theron delivers another chameleon like performance and Ellen Burstyn twitters away like always. Faye Dunaway has long ago convinced us that she hasn't any real idea of what acting is about other than trying to steal scenes, and Mark Walhberg covers character nuances from A-B(apathetic to bland) while huge pipe organs pound out prophetic over dramatic music to establish the doom to come. It was interesting to note that this pedestrian director didn't direct anything of note thereafter.

Over the course of his career Mark Wahlberg has emerged as the working man's image on the big screen. He certainly comes by that naturally with his background being born and raised in the Dorchester section of Boston. His best performances on screen in my opinion have been of ordinary people and their situations. In The Yards he gives one of his best performances and his Boston accent barely shows.The Yards refers to the place where the New York City subway cars are housed and maintained. There are several in the city and the action here takes place in the Sunnyside section of Queens. Mark Wahlberg is a young man who recently was released from jail having taken a rap for all of his friends involved in a crime.He wants badly to turn over a new leaf and his uncle James Caan who has a business maintaining the subway cars offers him work. He can also go the trade school route. But Wahlberg's mother Ellen Burstyn is in a bad way and he's needing money now. Another tragedy of our inadequate health system. Rather than repair subway cars, Wahlberg goes to work with his old running buddy Joaquin Phoenix who works for Caan on the side wrecking the work of other contractors, minority contractors who get a set quotient of work.But one night Wahlberg is caught by a cop whom he turns the tables on, takes his nightstick and clubs him leaving him in a coma. At the same time Phoenix has a quarrel with yardmaster at night and knifes him to death. No one suspects him, but there's a bullseye on Wahlberg's back with every cop in the city hunting him.The manure piles up big time in this one, even threatening the Queens Borough President Steve Lawrence. How it all works out is a typical New York City story.Big Kudos for Mark Wahlberg in this one and some recognition for Joaquin Phoenix playing another one who gets in way over his head. The Yards should be seen back to back with the Al Pacino film City Hall for a real look at New York's political underbelly.

There aren't many laughs in this dramatic pastiche of corrupt industries and the not-quite-innocent who is swept up in them before finally blowing the whistle.It's not ethnic, but it seems like it. There's a bit of "The Godfather," a dash of "Prince of the City", a soupçon of "On The Waterfront." There are all sorts of conflicts between men and women, family members united against the law -- or that part of it that isn't in bed with the gangsters.Interesting milieu. Mark Wahlberg as the ex con who's trying to obey the rules of his parole finds a job working for his uncle, James Caan, in the subway marshaling yard in Queens. Caan's company does repairs on broken subway cars. In order to make sure they have enough business, Caan has hired Joaquin Phoenix and a couple of bad goons to sneak into the yards at night and damage the cars. Caan's character is not unidimensional. When Wahlberg asks him for a job, he tells Caan that he'd like to work with Phoenix, a childhood friend. Caan gently tries to steer him into a more honorable, if less lucrative, path to success but Wahlberg is insistent. It's a big mistake on Wahlberg's part. There follow intrigue, brutally staged fist fights, and a couple of death, all leading to betrayal.Wahlberg doesn't have that many lines but he handles them well enough. Like the other men, he has a working-class New York accent. Lots of double negatives: "I don't know nothing." Charlize Theron, as Phoenix's doubtful girl friend, doesn't sound much like New York but she doesn't sound much like Johannesberg either. With her big eyes, upturned nose, and plump lips, she's never looked better.In many ways it's a depressing movie because although many characters commit immoral acts, all of them are given human qualities, including some that are generally considered virtues.

It is a tale that has been told before. Nothing really new here. The cast was very good. The production design was OK. Lighting and sound should have been better. I wonder about the choices the director made.It is one thing to try to make a Noir film, but I was totally turned off by the hushed tones, and whispers. Conversations seemed to take place in echo chamber. As it continued to be unhearable, it became unwatchable.If you have a quiet media room, then you might get more out of this than I did.There are plenty of other crime dramas out there.