With the benefit of hindsight, you might say 1995's Get Shorty plays a lot like one of those Coen brothers features that come along every few years or so and end up being a lot less than the film it wants to come across as. The idea usually reads well on paper, the film feels like a good idea at the time; sees some scenes work better than others and while it doesn't really know what it wants to be, it's almost as if that in itself is part of the charm - it's only afterwards when you think back that you shrug, adopt a ponderous tone and wonder whether it was really worth getting excited about. Get Shorty's like that, the film is an interesting mess and that's the best thing you can say about it; it doesn't know whether it's coming or going, it doesn't know what it's about, some characters are more interesting than others, some don't work at all but like something like 2008's Burn After Reading, it has a charm that works in the moment and only when it isn't bothering itself with either narrative or large amounts of substance.
For a film to so heavily involve the notion of filmmaking, it's only natural I suppose to note how even its title possesses a sense of deeply rooted sense of cinema; of which are infused in the form of 1971's Get Carter, itself a film about a hardened gangster travelling a large distance so as to get a job done with various parties and elements getting in the way. Get Carter had something about it, something solid and central and it maintained enthralling and gripping throughout. Here, it is the antithesis: several tangents as well as supporting characters, whom the film makes the golden mistake of making either ten times funnier or more interesting than the lead, are all going off at once thus creating a muddled and only marginally interesting piece. Was the film about a Florida based loan shark out of his element but falling in anyway with the crowd around him? Was it about a Miami mob boss who's owed money and wants it back? Is it about a heist? A con? Filmmaking? Gangsters? Is it a love story? A pair of hoods whom have a stake in a film company? The short and long of it is: too much of too many to be deeply involving, not enough of one or two to be deeply affecting.
The best thing about the film is quite easily Dennis Farina's initially Miami based mobster Ray Barboni, nicknamed 'Bones'. Most of the scenes in which Farina's angry, foul mouthed, border-line scociopathic gangster is around present to the audience the best material and the biggest laughs, with his lack of presence greatly diminishing the film. He gets agitated when Travolta's Chili Palmer flies out to Los Angeles so as to collect a debt following complications with a mob boss, eventually taking it upon himself to fly out there too so as to clear everything up. His exodus is because of Palmer's newfound sense of existence amidst the higher-ups of America's filmmaking industry, and his friendship with American B-movie filmmaker Harry Zimm (Hackman) whom it's established is a bit slimy and who makes, judging by the titles, some equally slimy films. Meanwhile, Delroy Lindo's L.A. based gangster Bo Catlett and beefy accomplice Bear (Gandolfini) have their own problems involving South American drug barons and stakes in the industry themselves, as actor and actress Martin Weir (DeVito) and Karen Flores (Russo), two character's we might have done without, hover around.
The film begins on a gloomy day in Miami, Palmer's fondness for film established by way of a rueful tone regarding a local disused cinema which he believes it would be fantastic if it were up and running. The kind of guy, in Palmer, that we're informed to be dealing with is put across in his attitudes and reactions to Bones' waltzing over with two cohorts. The threatening behaviour and petty jibes twinned with the taking of Palmer's coat on the way out of the diner they're all in means little to the man, the nervous reactions of the clerks in regards to Bones further adding to the strength and reputation the man carries. For Palmer, it means little and a later visiting to Bones' house along with the taking of everything in his stride aids in getting across what kind of person Palmer is for later skirmishes.
Therein the word skirmish lies the problem, Get Shorty effectively being a series of moderately entertaining, even more-so when Farina is on screen, bits and bobs sequences together that work on occasion but not enough to get truly excited about. The pithy self-aware jabs at the film industry and those within it in Palmer's dismissive talk of film producers and Catlett's equally dismissive talk of screenplays in their usually error ridden forms are amusing, but don't contribute to the greater extent of anything. The film is ultimately less interested in something that I had more of an interest in, in its noirish tendencies, and ended up more interested in something my attention waned in relation to in its filmmaking sub-plots; the systematic rejection of which is evident when a low level hood is disposed of at a character's luxurious home only for dialogue about movie making to immediately succeed the event and the fall out which it spawns. Its underlying idea that anybody, in this case quite literally, regardless of their past can waltz into the American film industry and lobby for some success is generally scathing in an understated sort of way, and there is, ultimately, enough to get caught up in for Get Shorty to work in the long run.
For a film to so heavily involve the notion of filmmaking, it's only natural I suppose to note how even its title possesses a sense of deeply rooted sense of cinema; of which are infused in the form of 1971's Get Carter, itself a film about a hardened gangster travelling a large distance so as to get a job done with various parties and elements getting in the way. Get Carter had something about it, something solid and central and it maintained enthralling and gripping throughout. Here, it is the antithesis: several tangents as well as supporting characters, whom the film makes the golden mistake of making either ten times funnier or more interesting than the lead, are all going off at once thus creating a muddled and only marginally interesting piece. Was the film about a Florida based loan shark out of his element but falling in anyway with the crowd around him? Was it about a Miami mob boss who's owed money and wants it back? Is it about a heist? A con? Filmmaking? Gangsters? Is it a love story? A pair of hoods whom have a stake in a film company? The short and long of it is: too much of too many to be deeply involving, not enough of one or two to be deeply affecting.
The best thing about the film is quite easily Dennis Farina's initially Miami based mobster Ray Barboni, nicknamed 'Bones'. Most of the scenes in which Farina's angry, foul mouthed, border-line scociopathic gangster is around present to the audience the best material and the biggest laughs, with his lack of presence greatly diminishing the film. He gets agitated when Travolta's Chili Palmer flies out to Los Angeles so as to collect a debt following complications with a mob boss, eventually taking it upon himself to fly out there too so as to clear everything up. His exodus is because of Palmer's newfound sense of existence amidst the higher-ups of America's filmmaking industry, and his friendship with American B-movie filmmaker Harry Zimm (Hackman) whom it's established is a bit slimy and who makes, judging by the titles, some equally slimy films. Meanwhile, Delroy Lindo's L.A. based gangster Bo Catlett and beefy accomplice Bear (Gandolfini) have their own problems involving South American drug barons and stakes in the industry themselves, as actor and actress Martin Weir (DeVito) and Karen Flores (Russo), two character's we might have done without, hover around.
The film begins on a gloomy day in Miami, Palmer's fondness for film established by way of a rueful tone regarding a local disused cinema which he believes it would be fantastic if it were up and running. The kind of guy, in Palmer, that we're informed to be dealing with is put across in his attitudes and reactions to Bones' waltzing over with two cohorts. The threatening behaviour and petty jibes twinned with the taking of Palmer's coat on the way out of the diner they're all in means little to the man, the nervous reactions of the clerks in regards to Bones further adding to the strength and reputation the man carries. For Palmer, it means little and a later visiting to Bones' house along with the taking of everything in his stride aids in getting across what kind of person Palmer is for later skirmishes.
Therein the word skirmish lies the problem, Get Shorty effectively being a series of moderately entertaining, even more-so when Farina is on screen, bits and bobs sequences together that work on occasion but not enough to get truly excited about. The pithy self-aware jabs at the film industry and those within it in Palmer's dismissive talk of film producers and Catlett's equally dismissive talk of screenplays in their usually error ridden forms are amusing, but don't contribute to the greater extent of anything. The film is ultimately less interested in something that I had more of an interest in, in its noirish tendencies, and ended up more interested in something my attention waned in relation to in its filmmaking sub-plots; the systematic rejection of which is evident when a low level hood is disposed of at a character's luxurious home only for dialogue about movie making to immediately succeed the event and the fall out which it spawns. Its underlying idea that anybody, in this case quite literally, regardless of their past can waltz into the American film industry and lobby for some success is generally scathing in an understated sort of way, and there is, ultimately, enough to get caught up in for Get Shorty to work in the long run.