City of Industry (1997)
MGM/UA DVD (region 1)
d. John Irvin; pr. Evzen Kolar, Ken Solarz; scr. Ken Solarz; ph. Thomas Burstyn; m. Stephen Endelman; ed. Mark Conte; cast. Harvey Keitel, Stephen Dorff, Timothy Hutton, Famke Janssen, Wade Dominguez, Michael Jai White, Lucy Liu (97 mins)
The success in the early 1990s of the first two films by Quentin Tarantino – Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction – is credited with galvanizing the crime film.
Suddenly there was a noticeable change. The movies were self-reflexive in outlook, the characters hipper, the dialogue wiser, and the action more brutal. The tone of these films was always quick and knowing: gutter tragedies infiltrated by sly self-consciousness – it was all about the attitude: confidence. Whilst some attempted plot complexity and a multitude of characters – Two Days in the Valley for instance – a larger number concentrated on streamlining the heist-gone-wrong film. Thus, such as Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead and especially City of Industry, both frequently and unfairly dismissed as derivative, sought to perfect this new hip-cynical crime movie. Flirting with film noir and the urban thriller and frequently wrought with revenge motifs and betrayal, these tough-minded and often bleak movies restored to the anti-hero a professional coldness and a lifestyle which probed their minimal interpersonal needs. Crime was an occupation like any other, although more than most was fraught with the real consuming monster – pride, which inevitably made matters personal. In City of Industry British director John Irvin took on this slick heritage, looking not to Tarantino and his imitators but back to such figures as Michael Mann and Walter Hill.
City of Industry is, in plot synopsis, a fairly uncomplicated crime-revenge movie. Harvey Keitel plays a professional thief who is interested in one more job, a jewel robbery, when the plans are brought to him by his brother (Timothy Hutton) and partner (Wade Dominguez).
Dominguez has personal problems at home, his wife (Famke Janssen) believing that he may soon go to prison, thus leaving her and her son to fend for themselves. There is also a new member in this “crew”, an arrogant hotshot driver (Stephen Dorff) who seems determined and obsessively proud. The jewel robbery proceeds as planned but (potential spoiler following – although ironically nothing that wasn’t given away in the preview) in the aftermath, Dorff proves a greedy man. Wanting the proceeds all for himself, he opens fire on his supposed partners, killing two of them. Keitel, however, manages to escape. Dorff thus covers his tracks and flees with the money. Keitel’s pride and resolute professionalism having been so assaulted, revenge is now both a personal matter and an obligation. He gathers his needed resources and slowly begins to track Dorff, in the process leading to Janssen, who may be able to assist him in ways he does not expect. Meanwhile, Dorff intends to pay for Keitel to be killed and hires such street assassins to go after him, aware that Keitel will not be deterred from his own desire to set things right.
The stylish polish of this film, and its simple plot, which effectively pares down the crime movie to its modern essence – betrayal and revenge – make for an engaging thriller.
British director John Irvin has proven himself over the last twenty years quite capable of handling American genre movies, though arguably sometimes more indifferently than others, and City of Industry is his most effective to date – in its treatment of unyielding criminal professionalism and its slick sense of urbanity it is deliberately evocative of those figures Irvin considers most influential – Michael Mann or Walter Hill. Like these directors at their most self-consciously existential, Irvin treats these characters as people for whom crime is a lifestyle choice, an occupation. Dominguez has an interpersonal life to maintain although Irvin doesn’t really probe this to any level beyond the plot function it eventually yields. Dorff is the loose cannon, an arrogant egotist who lacks any ethics and will easily betray his fellows when it suits him. It is almost as if for Irvin he represents a new breed of criminal – the cocksure youth fuelled by violent pride and loud music. His selfish lack of any code of behavior (or respect) makes him clearly the villain of the film and his actions tantamount to a form of subversive anarchy. In his struggle with the older Keitel thus, there are all the elements of a generational, allegorical challenge to established patriarchy.
In the film’s clever scheme of codes approaching transition, Dorff fails to complete the symbolic act of patricide that would have guaranteed his independence and the start of the new criminal ethos (effectively, the law of the son).
Keitel’s plight to revenge himself is thus the retribution of the wronged father (in symbolic terms at least) whose credo demands that he kill the rebellious substitute son. Although this allegorical layer is there it is not probed beyond implication as Irvin seems more concerned with rendering the surface action and textures as impeccably as possible. It is as if Irvin wants to reduce the film to its essential status as modern myth, its figures as empty, almost soulless archetypes going through the motions of ritual betrayal and revenge as if there is little else. In that respect, the film is again particularly close to early Walter Hill and offers little alternative to this resignation to genre ritual, although to some respect all of its central characters dream of achieving something more, even if none of them seem able to articulate what that actually is – they continue to do what they do thus for reasons they can barely comprehend. All that can remain is how they relate to the unspoken honor code of the criminal, a code that youth is systematically eroding: in the end they have only their pride left them – hence, a spiritual bankruptcy runs throughout the polished surfaces of this stylish movie.
DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The widescreen letterbox transfer matches the film’s sleek style, its initial concern for a kind of architectural coldness echoing Michael Mann though stopping short of his near abstraction of such urban locales. Locations are varied constantly and there is, in one truly remarkable instance, a sense of a single conversation carried though different locations that foreshadows the similar devices informing director Steven Soderbergh’s more open, breezy work in The Limey. The difference in look from location to location draws attention to the subtle qualities of differing light sources, hence the stress on shadowy interiors with colored lights (especially oranges) versus often bright exteriors. It also makes for a fine sense of one man’s descent into a vivid neon-lit darkness, and the film knowingly toys with film noir-ish sensibilities as it proceeds. Violence in this world is sudden and brutal: action scenes are engaging although the climactic use of a seemingly deserted and desolate factory perhaps fails to completely live up to the title expectations. Locations are increasingly unglamorous, making for a deliberate descent into slick ugliness. Black and white is used for interesting aesthetic effects towards the film’s end although the sleek textures throughout make the film perhaps the epitome of the contemporary take on slick impersonal professionalism. In plot, style and character, City of Industry is a lean and knowing action film.
Sound
The sound transfer is a moody, rich Dolby Digital Surround nicely preserving the movie’s overwhelming sense of technical proficiency. The aural design too is slick, polished and impersonal: ideal for this approach to narrative and characterization. The song selection is effective as is the overriding impression that Dorff gains his courage from loud music – he needs this pumped-up, artificial infusion of energy to be maintained throughout the film as if he fears the burnout of age and the criminal responsibility which would threaten his sense of amoral, sociopathic independence. His selfish pride is the core of his anarchy and yet always seeks some re-enforcement. The urban surroundings frequently make for busy backgrounds, especially in the early stages, although spatial effects are overall rather mild except during the action scenes. The score is for the most part effectively brooding and cleanly segues into the more metallic sounds during the climactic industrial complex facedown (the location being the perfect metaphor for this deliberately impersonal product of a movie). As the film progresses and the inevitable consequences of betrayal are played out, the aural textures seem more melancholic and indeed a sense of desolation soon pervades the film. Voices are always audible and the suddenness of violence is matched by the corresponding rise in audio levels. All told, this is a superior transfer.
Special Features
The only special feature is an original theatrical trailer.
