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GloriaRating:
Release Date: 25 February, 2003 Retail Price: $24.95 OUR Price: $21.99 You SAVE: $2.96! Cast: Complete Cast (8 total) |
Gloria Reviews
Am I the only one that noticed???
WOW i cant believe im the only one that noticed that it's been recently remade with a sci-fi twist in ultra-vioelet, which I've heard also sucks.
Why do I feel like I've seen this film before?
Admission: although I grew up on old movies, and try very hard to see a constant variety of film from the earliest days to the present, I've never seen a lot of the great '70s classics. So recently, I've had to very consciously make myself see some of these pictures, in an attempt to finally recognize that period of cinema for what it was, as opposed to what I merely believe it to be. Having just read Peter Bogdanovich's book of portraits and conversations, "Who the Hell's In It," I figured it was time for a go at a film by his friend, John Cassavetes.
Bogdanovich went to some length to praise "Gloria," and it sounded a little unusual, so I went with that one. To be honest, I was left with a number of negative feelings: too long-winded, too dry, not visually interesting enough. This is a very typical, simple thriller, with a hook that's been done before, and it's presented in a very obvious manner. The only times I came away with the sense of something 'more' were in some of the longer conversations.
The setup isn't much: man rats on the mob, the mob decide to kill him and his family, the family manages to leave their youngest child with a next door neighbor, the next door neighbor happens to be a former mob girl. What follows is the somewhat expected string of scenes with the older, grouchy woman leading a six-year-old boy around New York, running from modern-day gangsters, and calling everyone "punk" or "stupid" or "wise guy," and generally acting like a taller James Cagney with boobs. The kid gets a few witty, precocious lines, and it might've been cute at 30 minutes. At just over two hours it drags endlessly along, and though you get the sense the kid really cares for the woman, the woman never seems to care for the kid until the final reel where they're inevitably reunited in an unrealistically (and unsatisfyingly) happy ending. That meant I really didn't care about the woman, either, and it's pretty hard to follow a movie where the protagonist is as hard and unbending as a rock.
They remade this film in 1999 with Sharon Stone, and I'm reliably informed it was pretty ridiculous. I might've liked that more; ridiculous can be a lot of fun, with the right mood and the right crowd. Boring and obvious are just that - a waste of my time.
More Customer Reviews (14 total)
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