Joey Nova (James Franco) shuffles down the boardwalk peddling a stolen guitar to raise a few bucks for his next fix. He’s s a stone cold junkie with gaunt features and a sallow complexion. He is not as scary as he is pitiful. Joey’s ghostly presence haunts the abandoned warehouses that stand as a constant reminder of Long Beach’s glory days when it was a weekend Mecca for Long Island’s working class. They are symbols of the dashed hopes and broken dreams of its residents and of Joey Nova in particular in "The City by the Sea."

It’s a great opening but the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to its promise.

A chance meeting with a fellow junkie leads to a drug deal gone bad and the death of a dealer. Self-defense or murder? The answer seems obvious, but the filmmakers disavow the logic of their choices and use the death as a set up to justify the introduction of another character and two subplots that leave few surprises and little to the imagination.

William Forsythe plays Spider, a formula bad guy who thinks Joey stole money owed to him by the dead dealer. Gina, Joey’s ex girlfriend, goes on the lam with their son when Spider puts the squeeze on her to find Joey.

After Joey and his friend toss the body in the Chevy that gives Joey his moniker, they drive to the waterfront and dump the body. It later resurfaces in the East River off Lower Manhattan. The detective in charge of the investigation is Vincent La Marca (Robert De Niro), Joey’s father.

There are a few scenes that sparkle with fine performances by the likes of Frances McDormand and Eliza Dushku. McDormand plays the patient lover waiting for the right moment to pierce Vince’s emotional armor. Her Michele wants more than an occasional night in the sack and gets more than she bargained for when the newspapers decide to dredge up an old story about Vince’s father who was executed for the murder of a small child in a kidnapping case. Dushku’s Gina is the movie’s most sympathetic character. She exhibits all the heartbreak of an ex-junkie trying to stay straight who will do anything to protect her child. Later their situations complement each other a little too conveniently robbing their moments on screen of any emotion that may have accrued.

Likewise, Director Michael Caton Jones and screenwriter Ken Hixon devote a lot of attention to Vince’s friendship with his partner Reg Duffy (George Dzundra). Their scenes together are gems. But they too lose their luster once you realize that, just like many of the other scenes in "City by the Sea," they fall too neatly into place in the filmmaker’s efforts to bring Vince back into Joey’s life.

I’m not giving anything away here. The trailer that’s been running continuously on the tube and in the theaters long before the film’s debut tells us Joey is accused of killing a cop. ‘What’s a cop to do when his own son is his prime murder suspect?,’ the ads ask. At first I thought the dealer might be an undercover cop. But that idea was shot to hell right away. The guy was just too nasty. So that leaves Reg, a devoted father and husband whose loss will be felt the most by family, colleagues and friends.

"City by the Sea" continually shifts its focus between Joey’s life on the streets, the criminal investigation and Vince’s personal life until all three converge in an exciting climax that is too long in coming. Unfortunately, any passion generated by the performers, especially Robert De Niro and James Franco, suffers the same fate as the movie’s other dramatic highpoints. They are forfeited by placing too much emphasis on the mechanics of the plot which also attempts to draw one parallel too many between Joey and his father, Vince and his father, Gina’s situation and all the angst that goes with them. What starts out as a first rate crime thriller, turns into a second rate tale of redemption. The fault, dear readers, is not in the stars, but in the script.

Copyright 2002

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