B615-JV1
Film Review Of The Yards
Copyright © by Joe Valdez, 9/6/07
Leo Handler (Mark Wahlberg) returns to Queens after serving a sixteen
month prison sentence for auto theft. Guests at his welcome home party include
his buddy Willie (Joaquin Phoenix), his ailing mother (Ellen Burstyn), his aunt
(Faye Dunaway) and his cousin Erica (Charlize Theron), who has become Willie’s
girlfriend, in spite of a history she once had with Leo.
Leo visits his uncle Frank (James Caan), owner of a manufacturing company
that supplies the New York subway. Leo is under the impression that Frank is a
powerful figure in the borough and can help him, but his uncle suggests that his
nephew consider vocational school. Instead, Leo starts working with Willie, who
Frank entrusts with keeping the various city officials who award subway
contracts happy with cash or Knicks tickets.
Willie is also in charge of a crew who routinely go to the railyards to
wreck the equipment of the competition. Leo comes along as a lookout, but things
get out of hand; Willie kills a night watchman, and Leo puts a cop in the
hospital. Not sure Leo can be trusted to keep quiet if he’s arrested, Willie
reluctantly notifies him that he has to take care of the cop.
James Gray was a graduate of USC Film School. His debut feature – a
deliberately paced crime drama starring Tim Roth called Little Odessa - had been well received in 1994. Gray’s father
worked for a company that supplied New York subways, and for his sophomore
effort, Gray was writing a script incorporating stories he’d heard, along with
tales of corruption in the city during the ‘80s.
Gray’s script was close to 200 pages long. Harvey Weinstein -
co-chairman of Miramax Films with his brother Bob - demanded that Gray get it
into focus. He was allowed to bring in a classmate from USC named Matt Reeves to
rewrite it. The strength of their finished product attracted Mark Wahlberg, who
had just become a star, and Joaquin Phoenix and Charlize Theron, who were on the
verge of becoming stars.
With a budget of $17.7 million, The
Yards went before the cameras in the summer of 1998. Gray delivered his cut
of the picture in September. Put before a test audience, it did not score well.
Weinstein insisted on an ending that was more upbeat, which Gray conceded to and
shot over three days in May 1999. Miramax was still not pleased with the
response the film was getting, and buried it for another year in
post-production.
Gray received an invitation to screen The Yards at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2000. Reaction was
mixed. Some critics praised the artistry of the film’s look, while many panned
its clichéd plot. It was finally released in October 2000 - without TV
commercials - in only 150 theaters. It disappeared with less than $1 million at
the U.S. box office.
The Yards landed on a few top
ten critics lists that year, but it wouldn’t surprise me if after further
reflection, it ends up on some lists of the best films of the decade. The story
is old hat, but absolutely nothing about the way Gray frames that story is. He
favors a quiet, elegant ambiance, and cast actors who give some of the greatest
performances of their careers.
With director of photography Harris Savides, Gray bathes the film in
painterly melancholy. It’s like Michael Mann low budget; a crime film, but one
replacing macho intensity with seductive beauty. Rooms are as dim as any since
Gordon Willis lit The Godfather.
Characters whisper, hold back their emotions. There’s no more joy than you’d
encounter at a funeral wake, but Gray isn’t making a fun B-movie here. This is
an A-film with style and class.
Mark Wahlberg’s role is one he was born to play – a working class kid
brooding with menace and resentment - and he gives a career performance. Joaquin
Phoenix is as charismatic as Wahlberg is restrained, demonstrating brilliant
emotional range. Theron shows equal if not greater depth. She has a scene with
James Caan where she swallows her pride and begs her stepfather to help Wahlberg
that blew me away in how soulful she plays it.
The film flawlessly cast, pairing two generations of terrific actors.
Caan and Dunaway are sublime in this, expressing so much with a bare minimum of
dialogue, while Ellen Burstyn’s chemistry with Wahlberg is something special.
I cannot praise the performances in this film enough. Costume designer Michael
Clancy and art director Judy Rhee deserve a lot of credit. This cast looks
working class.
Composer Howard Shore adapted “Saturn” from Gustav Holst’s “Planets Suite”, but the film uses little music and even less dialogue, instead utilizing terrific sound design to set a vivid mood among the rustic railyards. The story is as old as the hills; Gray had to know this would never appeal to a mass audience. I didn’t exactly go bananas for The Yards in 2000, but I’m bananas about it now, and strongly recommend it.
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