dtb Review of Summer of Sam

Summer of Sam (1999)

The Cast is More Engaging Than the Characters They Play

[7/10 · 13 March 2004]

I'd heard good things about Adrien Brody's performance in this film, so I rented it to see what all the fuss was about. Along with THE PIANIST, SUMMER OF SAM (SOS) cemented my conviction that Brody is not only one of the most talented actors of his generation, but also one of the most fearless actors working today. Brody's work as THE PIANIST was physically and emotionally grueling as he starved himself, all but froze to death, sold his car and apartment and cut himself off from friends and family for 6 months as he attempted to emulate the sense of loss that Wladyslaw Szpilman felt as the Nazis took away his family, home, and dignity. Before Brody took on that Oscar-winning, star-making role, however, SOS featured him as Richie, an Italian-American kid from the Bronx in the summer of 1977 (not far from where I grew up, in fact). Against the backdrop of a New York City terrorized by serial killer "Son of Sam," a.k.a. "The 44-Caliber Killer" (one of his victims was a student at St. Catharine Academy, my high school), Richie goes punk (spiky hair, chains, even an outrageous fake Cockney accent), gets drawn into a life of graphically-depicted gay hustling and porno performances in Times Square while trying for punk rock stardom at CBGB's, and his best friend Vinnie (John Leguizamo) lures him into an ambush by a mob of paranoid goombahs who've gotten it into their heads that Richie must be the killer (SPOILER ALERT...Imagine the meatheads' disappointment when Richie's stepdad interrupts their beating and near-lynching by announcing in the nick of time that the police have just arrested David Berkowitz for the shootings...END SPOILER ALERT). Like that's not enough, Richie cuts off a hostile diner patron at the pass and generally freaks out the straights by breaking a glass bottle on his own head as the diner owner tries to make him leave (in an interview, Brody said Spike Lee swore the bottle was only candy glass, but the subsequent bleeding was real enough)! Here I am, so shy it takes all my courage just to strike up small talk with my little daughter's school friends' moms, and Adrien Brody's got the cajones to do such outrageous things onscreen for SOS and other movie roles. I've gotta admire someone with that kind of gutsiness! :-) As for the rest of the film, the acting is uniformly good, but there are so few people to root for that I had a hard time staying interested when Richie and his girl Ruby (Jennifer Esposito) weren't onscreen. Indeed, the character who's concentrated on most isn't even killer Berkowitz (who's mostly confined to murky cutaways where he's either shooting people or screaming in psychotic agony in his dingy apartment, plus an unintentionally hilarious scene where his neighbor's dog speaks to him -- in John Turturro's voice, no less!), but hairdresser Vinnie, who's not only easily swayed by mobs but also has this Madonna/Whore complex whereby he screws seemingly every woman who crosses his path while being afraid to have sex with his beautiful, loving, willing wife Dionna (Mira Sorvino is beguiling as one of the film's few likable characters). Well, at least SOS serves as an interesting time capsule of NYC, especially the outer boroughs, during that fearful summer. Too bad Lee and co-writers Victor Colicchio and Michael Imperioli couldn't find more engaging characters to follow around.