DIRECTOR
Ted Demme
SCREENWRITER
Mike Armstrong
PRODUCERS
Nicolas Clermont
Ted Demme
Adam Doench
Elie Samaha
Jim Serpico
Joel Stillerman
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Adam Kimmel
MUSIC
Todd Kasow
EDITOR
Jeffrey Wolf
CAST
Denis Leary (Bobby O'Grady)
Ian Hart (Mouse)
Famke Janssen (Katy)
Billy Crudup (Teddy)
Colm Meaney (Jackie O'Hara)
Martin Sheen (Hanlon)
Jeanne Tripplehorn (Annie)
Lenny Clarke (Skunk)
Jason Barry (Seamus)
Kevin Chapman (Mickey Pat)
George MacDonald (Gallivan)
John Diehl (Digger)
Lyndon Byers (Fitzie)
Noah Emmerich (Red)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 93m
U.S. release: September 25, 1998
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Other Ted
Demme films
reviewed on this site:
- Blow
- Life
|
Ted
Demme, whose uncle is the Oscar-winning director Jonathan (The Silence
of the Lambs), has come into his own as a filmmaker to
watch. He began on MTV, directing fast, funny commercials featuring
some guy ranting about an all-Cindy-Crawford channel. That guy,
of course, turned out to be Denis Leary, and the two went on
to collaborate on Leary's two cable specials, as well as Who's
the Man (wherein Leary had a small role), the much-loved
black comedy The Ref, and now Monument Ave. This
could turn out to be a regular De Niro-Scorsese director-star
combo: Leary might work for other directors and cash his checks,
but only Ted Demme really brings out the best in him.
Monument Ave has been unfairly compared to Mean Streets,
Scorsese's masterpiece about young guys on the margins of urban
crime. It's true that some recent wannabes, like Amongst Friends
and even Michael Corrente's impressive Federal Hill, were
a little too close for comfort to the story of Charlie and Johnny
Boy. But Monument Ave has its own flavor. Demme has a
distinctive glum style -- even his Beautiful Girls had
an overcast of despair and regret -- and his sensibility dovetails
perfectly with that of Leary, whose album No Cure for Cancer
includes a rousing dirge called "Traditional Irish Folk
Song": "They come over here and they take all our land/They
chop off our heads and they boil them in oil/Our children are
leaving and we have no heads/We drink and we sing and we drink
and we die."
That could almost be the theme song for Monument Ave,
which is dipped in a deep Boston-Irish fatalism: We've always
been here, we'll be here till the day we die, let's get loaded
and beat someone up. Or get shot. Leary plays Bobby O'Grady,
a low-level car thief whose life consists of stealing, drinking,
drugs, and hockey. His pals, like the aptly named Mouse Murphy
(Ian Hart) or Seamus (Jason Barry), are just as trapped as he
is; he has a little more on the ball brain-wise, though he won't
if he keeps doing speedballs. Demme and scripter Mike Armstrong
(a Leary buddy who co-wrote the unfairly maligned confection
Two If By Sea) view these deluded losers with the sad
compassion of gods who see where these guys are headed but can't
do anything to stop them.
There isn't much of a plot (there wasn't much of a plot in Mean
Streets, either, come to think of it). The local gangster
bigwig, Jackie (Colm Meaney), rules with a veneer of benevolence
hiding his ruthlessness: Anyone who snitches about mob activity,
or even appears to be a rat, turns up dead. There's a
nice scene suffused with dread when a rabbity kid just out of
jail talks about how the feds came to see him. He bends over
backwards insisting that he didn't tell them anything, and all
the while Bobby sits there and listens sadly, mentally saying
goodbye to the kid, because the hearty Jackie is also at the
table, telling the kid not to worry.
The performances are uniformly fine, with nary a fake Cliff Clavin
accent to be heard, though one actor seems out of place -- Martin
Sheen as the grim, walrus-mustached detective who keeps hounding
Bobby about the increasing body count among his buddies. As a
friend of mine pointed out, you look at Sheen at this point and
all you think is Spawn;
every time he shows up, he takes you out of the movie. Everyone
else -- including Famke Janssen and Jeanne Tripplehorn as the
film's token estrogen -- is on the nose; Ian Hart's Mouse has
the film's funniest moment -- a comically anti-climactic break-in
-- and Leary shows his dramatic stuff, particularly when Bobby
pays his final respects to a fallen friend. Another movie might
have forced Bobby into an Oscar-bait speech; Leary's choked silence
speaks volumes. Words don't mean anything; dead is dead, and
life for Bobby and his crew isn't much different. Monument
Ave isn't without humor, but it gives off a winter-in-Boston
chill that you take with you in your bones. |