BEFORE: If you count back to the film "Lucky Numbers", then mathematically I'm halfway through my summer of cops and robbers, right around the mid-point of actual summer, too. I'll get back to cops in a couple days, I swear - but for now I'm sticking with criminals.
THE PLOT: After a small time crook steals all his belongings, a film school student meets Carmine Sabatini, an "importer" bearing a startling resemblance to a certain cinematic godfather.
AFTER: This was an odd little film - I think I avoided it because at the time it was released, I had just graduated from film school, and didn't have much interest in seeing a film about someone still in film school. Matthew Broderick (last seen way back in "The Cable Guy") plays Clark Kellogg, an NYU film student - and having been one myself, I can confirm that my experience was almost nothing like what's depicted in this film. For one thing, we never see Clark actually making a film - and NYU required that all freshman film students take a Super 8 production course, or at least a still photography class.
There were three components to the film degree back at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts - production, writing and film criticism. The only classes we see Clark taking in this film are criticism classes, so at least they got one small part correct. Wouldn't you know it, his class is studying "The Godfather" around about the time that he gets involved in an import magnate who looks exactly like Don Corleone. Now, having your real life reflected in the films you're watching, that's a topic I happen to understand.
How Clark ends up working for a reputed mobster, and the concept behind the cargo they ask him to transport, are farfetched at best. And we're led to believe that Marlon Brando's character is 12 steps ahead of everyone else, which is also quite unlikely. He's essentially reprising his role as Don Corleone, with the explanation that the movie character may have been based on the well-known, yet still under-the-radar Sabatini. But you can't have it both ways - he's either well-known or he's not...
Once again we've got mobsters AND corrupt cops, and it's tough to find a horse to root for. What's worse - smuggling and eating endangered animals, or scamming people into believing that they're doing so? Mobsters committing crimes, or feds taking payoffs for looking the other way?
The movie seemed to lose its focus about midway through - God forbid that the mobster-like character turn out to be a true mobster, and be engaged in something unquestionably immoral, like drugs or prostitution. But as it is, there was some plot redemption near the end, so it finished a little stronger.
Also starring Bruno Kirby (last seen in "Modern Romance"), Penelope Ann Miller (last seen in "Along Came a Spider"), Frank Whaley (last seen in "Broken Arrow"), Jon Polito (last seen in "American Gangster"), B.D. Wong, and Kenneth Welsh (who I remember best as Windom Earle from "Twin Peaks") with cameos from Bert Parks, and Paul Benedict (aka the "Mad Painter" from Sesame Street) as the film teacher.
RATING: 5 out of 10 espressos
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