Leonard Maltin's 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen - Maltin, Leonard [14]
Director Jean-Marc Vallée (who wrote the expansive and emotionally charged screenplay with François Boulay) makes canny use of popular music—from David Bowie to the Rolling Stones—to signify the passage of time and the societal shifts of the late 1960s and ’70s. He also establishes early on that the father is inordinately fond of Patsy Cline and Charles Aznavour, and insists on singing along with Aznavour records at almost every official family gathering. This seemingly tangential piece of business turns out to have surprising resonance in the film’s later passages.
Although the setting is Montreal, the language is French, and the family is Catholic, the family dynamic in C.R.A.Z.Y. is so well developed that the story is universally relatable. That, and the touchstones of social change that audiences of a certain age will remember, give the film broad appeal.
Indeed, while C.R.A.Z.Y. swept the Canadian GENIE Awards and won Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto Film Festival, it is significant to note that it also won the Audience Award at the AFI Fest—in Los Angeles.
18. CRIMINAL
(2004)
Directed by Gregory Jacobs
Screenplay by Gregory Jacobs and Steven Soderbergh (as Sam Lowry)
Based on a Screenplay by Fabián Bielinsky
Actors:
JOHN C. REILLY
DIEGO LUNA
MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL
PETER MULLAN
JONATHAN TUCKER
ENRICO COLANTONI
ZITTO KAZANN
MICHAEL SHANNON
MALIK YOBA
ELLEN GEER
JACK CONLEY
Hollywood has a spotty record when it comes to remaking successful films from other countries for American consumption. There are, of course, standouts: Three Men and a Baby comes to mind, and on a smaller scale, Tortilla Soup, a likable Latino paraphrase of Eat Drink Man Woman. My daughter would argue for The Birdcage, which I don’t dislike, but my memory of screenwriter Francis Veber’s original La Cage aux Folles, is just too strong to surrender to the American copy.
In a similar vein, film buffs who saw the Argentine import Nine Queens have no use for its modest remake, Criminal. I missed Fabián Bielinsky’s 2000 release the first time around, so I was both charmed and fooled by Gregory Jacobs’s interpretation, which resets the story in Los Angeles. (Jacobs wrote the screenplay with his longtime colleague Steven Soderbergh, who chose to use the pseudonym Sam Lowry.)
I also happen to like the actors Jacobs cast in the leading roles, John C. Reilly and Diego Luna. Reilly, the everyman with a perennial hangdog expression, strolls into a low-rent casino and spots Luna, a likable young hustler, pulling a scam, insisting he hasn’t received proper change from a waitress. He intercedes, posing as a plainclothes cop, and “arrests” Luna, escorting him outside to the parking lot. There he chastises the younger man for his obviousness, reveals his own duplicity, and offers him a job as an apprentice for a series of cons he’s about to pull. Luna, who needs money badly, readily agrees, and Reilly takes on the role of teacher and mentor.
Then a big score presents itself. Reilly is called by his sister (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a concierge at a major Los Angeles hotel. A notorious counterfeiter has taken ill at the hotel just as he’s about to put over a deal with an Irish collector of rare currency (Peter Mullan), who’s scheduled to return home within twenty-four hours. There is bad blood between Gyllenhaal and her brother, but she needs him to get the forger off her hands, and there’s a lot of money at stake.
This is big, much bigger than the day-to-day scams that make up Reilly’s life, and he needs Luna to help him pull it off. Time is of the essence, and every piece of the puzzle must fit exactly. Needless to say, there are many twists and turns, and nothing is as it seems. Unless you’ve seen Nine Queens I don’t think you could figure out where the story is headed…and that’s the fun of watching Criminal.
Los Angeles is probably the most photographed city in the world,