Movie Review: Mikey and Nicky

        

        If you like your coffee black and your scotch straight up and don’t believe anything good will ever come out of life, this movie is for you. Taut, dark and foreboding, think Goodfellas without the jukebox hits being piped into the background and, instead of The Hawaiian Cottage filled with mafia wannabes wearing dapper shirts, the impetuous violence takes place in a cheap 24/7 coffee shop that refuses to hand out complimentary cream. It is all mob lore from the bottom of the food chain. 

        The premise of the movie is never outwardly stated but can be figured out very quickly. Nicky played John Cassavetes is a loser of the first order who, for unknown reasons, has run afoul of the Philadelphia mob and is on the lam for his life. Peter Falk as Mikey is his supposed best friend who pretends to be trying to save him but is in reality doing double duty as an advance scout for the hit man played brilliantly by Ned Beatty. All the players have no redeeming social virtues. 

        Thus we start out with Cassavetes hiding out in a sleazy hotel room in South Philly. He is on the verge of suicide, sensing full well that his time is up. Falk tracks him down.   There the cat and mouse game begins. Falk is helping Cassavates elude Beatty but in reality is keeping in phone contact with him but manages to keep one step ahead of Beatty by misleading him. Remember, this is all pre-cell phones when one had to find a pay phone and keep track that way. Almost impossible but very convenient if you are trying to keep 30 minutes between you and your target. 

        The “window dressing” is excellent: cheap bars and luncheonettes, big, old, oversized Cadillacs, cheap perfume infested hotels that are nothing more than temporary shack ups for drunkards, addicts, and low rent whores and their clientele. The streets are dark and barren.

After all, what decent person would be roaming the streets of a working class Philadelphia industrial area at this time of night? To really appreciate the flavor of the movie, one has to examine Beatty character. A purported hit man. Not! Instead of a Luca Brasi lookalike or someone who walked out of a Graham Greene novel, we get Beatty as Kinney.

He represents all that was bad about the 1970’s: bad hair, even worse clothes, and a personality that was custom made for the era: a middle aged, overweight divorcee, who looks like he has spent one too many nights in a cheater’s bar trying to pick up sexually deprived women of his ilk. All without success of course! 

        As Mikey and Nicky stumble their way around town, they visit a neighborhood prostitute, played to almost perfection by Carol Grace. She is vulnerable, having been used and abused by every low life in the neighborhood. Her face has fear and loathing of men written all over it. Whatever beauty she once had has long been drained from her and her eyes reflect it. In other words, life for her, as with every other character, is an inevitable road to disaster. 

        For sheer foreshadowing of the unsubtle variety, we have our two protagonists riding a bus on their way to visit Nicky’s mother’s grave. They discuss life and death in a banal way, which is the only way they know how.

Of course, the graveyard is life’s last destination. Another honorable mention about an F word that was not thrown around: family. Well, Nicky, after having it out with Mikey, Nicky attempts to force his way into his estrange wife’s house. Fearing him as much as loving him, she reluctantly lets him in. Good sense grabs her by the ankles, and out goes Nicky. 

        His last stop? Mikey’s house, a surprisingly well-maintained house in a posh section of Philadelphia. There we meet Mikey’s wife, Annie, played by Rose Arrick. After Mikey gets home, Nicky knocks on the door and Rose, knowing what is coming and following Mikey’s orders, refuses to let him in. Beatty is a block away. 

        Then, there is light! Sunshine! Odd, until this point I thought the movie was in black and white but color it was. The next minute is predictable: Nicky gets gunned down in the style of February 14, 1929. THE END. 

        Recommendation: A definite thumbs up. The interaction between Falk and Cassavetes is superb. Not a wasted scene. As a footnote, Elaine May directed the movie. It still is a rarity to have a female film director.

Book Review: Bad, Or The Dumbing of America by Paul Fussell

This book is the fifth of Fussell's writings that I have read. After The Great War and Modern Memory, Wartime, The Boys Crusade, and Doing Battle, this one does not measure up to those high standards. Maybe that is deliberate as the subject matter is more an observation of various American foibles from a cynical perspective than a serious historical inquiry. Fussell offers up a critique of American culture and habits from a professorial perch that comes off as elitist and snobbish although with its occasional humorous flare. From Fussell's perspective, the average American is a superficial bore, a gullible sap that succumbs to advertisers' blandishments hook, line and sinker and then uses this wide array of fake accouterments to create the aura of sophistication and a well-bred upbringing. But as with all of Fussell’s books, what is advertised via the government or business is pure poppycock. His books on WWI and II illustrate this point in a cruel hoax of a way. If irony is the spice of life, it is also the literary weapon that exposes government corruption and hypocrisy. Think of all the patriotic songs and movies that make war the equivalent of something akin to an LSU/Alabama football game and juxtapose that image next to men screaming for their mother as they get their limbs blown off in a battle whose advertised purpose borders on the macabre. This book, though, is more on the satirical side. Fussell divides each chapter into a specific area of American life and conduct that he labels BAD as opposed to merely bad. Thus, we get a sociological take on the absurdity of the restaurant menu that offers lousy food but served in an atmosphere of conceit and status. Ditto books, movies, people, magazines, higher education, newspapers, and the like. The only area Fussell overlooks is sports. However, Fussell veers off into an attitude of condescension towards the average American that is almost insulting. In his world, circa 1989, Americans are base people who are suckers for every cheap form of make believe status symbols and commercial come ons and rip-offs that satisfy their social insecurities. The truth is that the average American is just as amused as Fussell by the culture of ego feeding that permeates American life. Fussell's lighthearted approach reminds one of MAD Magazine, where every aspect of American life was satirically ripped apart. However, MAD's shtick was always with a wink and a nod at the ultimate wisdom of the "common man." Fussell sees the average American though the eyes of Mencken and Upton Sinclair's Babbitt, whose is actually quoted verbatim on one page. Fussell's political ideology interferes with the book's central point: the comical boorishness of American middle class culture. Thus, we are treated to Fussell's own base prejudices and assumptions that have always infected the American intellectual class: Republicans are stupid and so are voters for falling for their idiotic sloganeering. The unstated implication is that those left of center, especially college professors, are the Platonic betters in our society and should be allowed to dictate social mores to the rest of us. This view is pure nonsense. I was surprised by Fussell's political bias. His books on WWI and II evince an absolute hostility towards government and its habitual lies and cover-ups while hordes of incredulous young men were carted off to battle to be killed and mutilated like hogs in a meat processing plant. Fussell died in 2012. Maybe his political views changed. But if you are going to be a cynic and skeptic, at least spread that attitude across the board. Otherwise, you end up sounding like, well, a college professor.

Recommendation: Read but only after you have read Fussell’s other, more serious books.