Yonkers Joe: Grade B

B
Yonkers Joe (2008)
Chaz Palminteri, Christine Lahti, Tom Guiry; Writer-Director Robert Celestino.

I am a longtime fan of Chaz Palminteri so I may be overrating this movie, but I enjoyed it despite its often sagging pace. Joe is an old gambler and hustler, an expert in cheating at cards and at dice. He bets the ponies compulsively, apparently with mixed results, and practices palming dice to relax. His comfortable life in Yonkers with his girlfriend (Lahti) is disturbed when a facility caring for his retarded son (Guiry) expels the teenager for aggressiveness. The old con man is panicked, at a loss about what to do with the child, but his girlfriend responds better to the challenge. The retarded character is extremely annoying and was a significant negative for me. It was some kind of implausible synthesis of Down Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, nonspecific cognitive deficit, and most annoying, a sensorimotor problem that had the young man hold his jaw off to one side and speak as if he had CP. The picture is so wrong I winced every time I saw him on screen. Perhaps those less familiar with developmental disorders could accept the stereotype.

Joe must come up with a pile of money to pay for a group home to get the kid out of his house and off his back, so he decides to run a dice scam in Los Vegas, even though his buddies tell him it is impossible to beat Vegas security. But he has a plan that makes a great plot, with lots of interesting moves and good internal tension. Meanwhile, his girlfriend is increasingly ticked off at him for not stepping up to his fatherly duties with his son.The two stories come together when Joe does finally establish an emotional connection with his son just as the dice scam reaches its conclusion.

It is a sensitively written movie, part grifter-thriller, and part adult relationship drama. The relationship theme was too slow, too predictable, and not drawn sharply enough, so it always was a maddening diversion from the gambling plot, which was far more interesting. The relationship side of the story didn’t have anything to say. Many dramatic possibilities were overlooked.

Palminteri acts better than I have ever seen him, the venerable gangster stereotype even doing “sensitive” relationship scenes convincingly. Supporting characters are very strong. Directing is strong, especially in small details and gestures. Sets are perfect. It is hard to say why this independent project does not come alive on both levels, but it’s got enough going for it to be worth a look.

21: Grade C

C
21 (2008)
Kevin Spacey, Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Lawrence Fishburne. Director Robert Luketic.

Kevin Spacey is a physics professor at MIT who puts together a team of students to learn a simple card-counting system to beat the Las Vegas casinos. In blackjack, every card played is shown so you can count how many aces, face cards and 10’s have been played. Since you know how many of those are in a deck, you adjust your betting according to how many are left, beating the house odds.

On the team, Sturgess develops a passionless relationship with Bosworth. Fishburne is the casino security manager who spots the scam after it becomes apparent that the casino is losing money. There is no explanation why the team stupidly plays the same casino night after night, week after week. Nor can we understand why Sturgess doesn’t open some bank accounts instead of stashing wads of cash over a ceiling tile in his dorm room. For a bunch of smarty-pantses, the team is weak on strategic thinking.

Despite the intellectually engaging story, the movie is very slow. “Filler” scenes of cityscapes, neon lights, people boarding airplanes, driving, walking, sleeping, eating, shopping, burn up most of the screen time. The characters are not well developed or emotionally engaged. Finally, 90 dead minutes into the movie, new writers must have been brought in, a genuine plot develops and it’s pretty good, although the ending, which suddenly turns the entire story into a flashback, is lame. Spacey is always enjoyable to watch, as is Fishburne, but the rest of the cast was unremarkable.