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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
It goes without saying Sidney Lumet is one of the greatest
American auteurs of his time since Elia Kazan, John Frankenheimer or Norman
Jewison in terms of crafting broadly appealing contemporary dramas made with
technical precision and a unique all-encompassing gift for directing his
actors. The man behind such legendary
screen epics as 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network and
Serpico was nominated five times for the Academy Award during his
lifetime. Receiving an honorary Oscar in
2004, the man was a skillful technical craftsman to learn from and
respect. Although some critics felt the
maestro was losing his touch near the end of his tenure, as proven by Arrow
Video’s forthcoming 2K restored blu-ray of his 1996 crime drama Night Falls
on Manhattan, the ‘old slugger’ showed no signs of withering or wearing
down with age in one of the director’s most underrated and clandestine
productions of his illustrious career.
Based on the novel by former NYPD officer Robert Daley of
Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon, the film follows New York based
fledgling recruit assistant district attorney Sean Casey (Andy Garcia) as he
starts out work within the legal system.
Not long into his jumpstarting career, a seismic case drops into his lap
involving his father NYPD detective Liam Casey (Ian Holm) and his partner Joey
Allegretto (James Gandolfini) regarding the apprehension of infamous local drug
dealer Jordan Washinton (Shiek Mahmud-Bey).
A seemingly cut-and-dried homicide case, things get complicated when
Washington’s astute defense attorney Sam Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss) implies his
client’s actions were ones of self-defense and that officers were previously
involved in dealings with the drug lord.
The case appears to be closed and behind them, but the unwanted
skeletons in Liam Casey and Joey Allegretto’s respective closets keep coming
and threaten to destroy the carefully constructed house of cards the Casey
family tried so hard to mount in the first place through any means necessary.
Loosely inspired by the real-life crime case of drug dealer
Larry Davis who shot six cops but was acquitted when celebrity defense attorney
William Kunstler proved in a court of law the cops were involved in the drug
dealings, Night Falls on Manhattan joins 12 Angry Men, Network
and Dog Day Afternoon in terms of starting out seemingly
straightforward before the unfolding story reveals more unexpected nooks and
crannies. A largely overlooked gem that
did not make the same splash with critics as his prior works did with some
insisting Lumet was losing his touch, the film is anchored by brilliant
impassioned performances from the eclectic cast including but not limited to
Lena Olin as a romantic interest to Sean Casey who begins to learn not all is
what it seems with the Casey family, Bobby Cannavale in his screen debut and an
utterly fantastic Ron Liebman as Morgenstern the crooked District Attorney
playing politics over abiding by the law.
Shot exquisitely by Academy Award winning Out of Africa cinematographer
David Watkin who also lensed Ken Russell’s The Devils and Peter Brook’s Marat/Sade
and given an appropriately somber low-key jazzy score by Fire in the Sky composer
Mark Isham, Night Falls on Manhattan looks and sounds beautiful and
perfectly captures the interior aura of the courtroom, the squalid alleyways of
the New York slums and the increasingly elite living arrangements of Sean
Casey. It goes without saying Andy
Garcia, Ian Holm and Richard Dreyfuss attack their roles mightily without ever
veering into overacting or chewing the scenery.
Here, their anger and outbursts feel natural rather than telegraphed and
by the end of this sordid saga we’re honestly not sure who to root for anymore.
Released to largely critical indifference with some praising
it while others lambasted it, Night Falls on Manhattan pulled in a
decent $10 million at the box office before fading into Paramount Pictures
obscurity. Not until recently with
renewed interest in the director’s oeuvre and a recent licensing deal with
Paramount are we starting to see films like Night Falls on Manhattan finally
given their due. Arrow’s set mastered in
2K comes with archival audio commentaries with Sidney Lumet, the cast and crew,
archival interviews on the set and an hour-long documentary from 2002 involving
Sidney Lumet in a roundtable discussion with Andy Garcia, Ron Liebman, Jack
Lemmon, Rod Steiger, Christopher Walken and many others. Seen now, it is perhaps one of the best films
of the 1990s that completely came and went without much recognition. Hopefully with Arrow’s newly restored set,
audiences who previously overlooked this taut little gem now have a chance to
reassess and reevaluate its obvious place in cinema history as one of the great
final films from one of America’s most original auteurs.
--Andrew Kotwicki
