Actors: Harvey Keitel, Mad Dog
Director: Abel Ferrara
It's hard for me not to like a movie that opens with Chris 'Mad Dog' Russo's voice and includes references to Kal Daniels. And as it turns out, I did like it.
Note: Non-Kal Daniels related spoilers
In the famous essay Hamlet and His Problems, T.S. Eliot observes that Hamlet is a dramatic failure because the action of the play occurs mostly within Hamlet's head. Since we cannot access what's actually going on there, we cannot understand Hamlet's motivations. This was the problem I had with this film - there's a very stylized way of trying to get into Keitel's head, but we never really get a sense that Harvey Keitel's character is an actual person. Thus this is a film about good and evil - but how he is pulled by these forces he can only convey with soliloquies and grotesque whimpers. Even more unrealistic was the plot point involving the Mets being in the playoffs.
Like Darryl Strawberry in the film, Bad Lieutenant swings for the fences; sometimes connecting, sometimes missing terribly.
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Kal Daniels could have also ruined my life through gambling. If you asked me any time up until five minutes ago to bet on who the best-hitting 25-and-under outfielder on the Cincinnati Reds in 1987 was, I'd have confidently lost pretty much everything on Eric Davis.
ReplyDeletekal daniels was an excellent, near all-star level player, i have no idea why his career dropped off as it did. i suspect it was a drug regimen not unlike harvey keitel's. totally underrated compared to eric davis.
ReplyDeleteI really wish I had been the first to comment on Kal Daniels.
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