No.226 : The Yards (2000)

 

The Yards at the IMDb

You may have thought that E.U. rules would have demanded that this film be renamed ‘The Metres’ but fear not - the yards referred to are train yards, rather than units of measurement.

The film opens with a young looking Markie Mark heading home to Queens from a stint in prison. He was actually 29 when this was made and is the same age as me so it must just be a good vintage.

His family has a party for him and he is collared by his parole officer who needs him to get a job. He meets with his uncle James Caan who suggests a two year apprenticeship so that he can get a proper job. Not fancying this Markie hooks up with his friend Jaoquin Phoenix who works for Caan and seems to have loads of cash. He also has Markie’s old flame Charlize heron as a girlfriend.

Jaoquin explains that he is a fixer who wins contracts for Caan’s train fitting business. Of course this is done by way of bribes and smashing up his opposition’s rolling stock. He takes Markie along on a job that sees the yard manager refuse to play ball which results in Jaoquin stabbing him to death. Meanwhile altered by the alarm pressed by the yard manager a cop confronts Markie about his presence in the yard after dark. After a scuffle the cop is in a coma and sharp focus is drawn on the antics of Cann’s outfit and in the train tendering process in general.

Things deteriorate for Markie after he chickens out of finishing off the now conscious cop in his hospital bed, and gets fingered for the beating as well. Caan and the crew wash their hands of him and soon he is a marked man, especially after Jaoquin pins the murder on him too, after he learns that Charlize may like the Funky Bunch front man more than him.

With a large corruption investigation underway can Markie escape taking the blame and will the widespread corruption help to save his ass?

This was a decent offering but at the end it felt a bit slight and insubstantial. The story would have worked better as a mini series, as the sequence of events seemed hurried and unlikely. Markie basically goes for a job and on the first night is on the run for murder - maybe bed him in a bit and show us how things usually operate?

The settings and characters were familiar with the gritty realism of ‘Gone Baby Gone’ and ‘The Drop’ plain to see. It could have done with a Casey Affleck or similar in one of the leads as Markie and Jaoquin both looked like they were playing dress up. The larger cast was better despite James Caan’s poor moustache and Fay Dunaway’s poor fainting.

I’m not sure if this was a morality tale or just a slice of life but I wasn’t buying it. Markie seemed a bit of a scumbag and his resistance to a straight job left him being unsympathetic when circumstances went against him.

The big finale seemed a bit daft and I’m sure the police wouldn’t let a murder suspect out of their sight never mind let him weasel his way out of a air tight collar. I guess the message was that corruption goes to all levels, but it made for an unsatisfying conclusion that mirrored the rest of the film.

THE Tag Line - One Train You Can Miss 60%

No.218 : The Gambler (1974)

The Gambler (1974)

With our revolutionary new policy of adding the year of release after the film’s title we can now do pair ups of same named films. These may be remakes & originals or just the same name, different film. The options are literally two.

First up in this double bill-athon is the original ‘The Gambler’ from 1974. Don’t fret, there’s no Kenny Rogers in sight - this is a gritty look at the world of betting and gangsters.

James Caan plays ‘Axel’ a literary professor who is an inveterate gambler. We see him at first in a back street joint losing $44k - and that was a lot of money in 1974 - over a quarter of a million in today’s bucks. It’s not clear at first why get gets so much credit but we soon learn he comes from a rich family who bail him out. He has a lovely girlfriend in Lauren Hutton and a sweet Mustang, but he still needs his gambling hit.

He manages to get his mother to give him the cash, who extracts it from James Woods' slimy banker, but he’s straight off to Vegas to gamble it up. Despite winning, he soon loses the lot and more owing to his habit of picking the losers in every basketball match.

With Lauren fed up and his family despairing, Caan has one last card to play - will he get out from under or is he in a death spiral, from which there is no escape?

That quick summary covers more or less all of the plot, in what is a pretty straightforward film. As soon as we meet Caan he’s in a hole, a hole that he manages to make progressively worse as the film goes on. It was a great lesson in observation with many classic gambling traits rote large. He explains that he needs the action, so even when he’s ahead, it’s never enough. He’s a brave man as a cavalcade of familiar mob leg breakers dog his every step including Paul Sorvino and Paulie off ‘Rocky’.

Caan was excellent as the tunnel visioned Axel, who couldn’t see beyond the next big score. The film did show the highs of being a gambler too, with a great sequence in Vegas seeing him ride his luck to the point he was hitting on 18 as he knew a ‘3’ would be the next card. It never lasts though!

The chaos he creates for his family and friends was well done with his mother a picture of resignation. There was some confusion about where he was with his debts and who he owed, but I guess that would be a deliberate ploy to show how mixed up Axel’s life was. There were loads of great character actors on show with Huggy Bear being a standout at the end as , you’ll never guess, a pimp.

I felt the film should have ended with the climatic basketball matched but it meandered another ten minutes just to show that the spiral would continue as greater thrills were sought. Some things are better implied, but at least we got Huggy shouting some jive.

Overall this was a great character piece that was well observed and acted and it may even make you think twice the next time you fancy £5 on ‘Lucky Lad‘ in the Chepstow 5.15.

THE Tag Line : Take a bet on this  78%