A Bad Film Among Us

This film was nominated for the Golden Palm – the biggest, greatest award at the Cannes Film Festival? I cannot believe my eyes. This must be a mistake. What could the Jury see in this film – enough to nominate it in such an illustrious category? The Golden Raspberries were more truthful: Worst Actress for Melanie Griffith and a nomination for Worst Supporting Actress for Pollan.

“Inside every man, there’s a thief waiting to burst through.” How eloquent.


Melanie Griffith is a good actress, as evidenced by her role in Working Girl (1988) but this was a poor choice in roles for her; an even poorer choice for Sidney Lumet.

The only interesting part of this movie, I can say, is the examination of Jewish Hasidism culture in America. This topic, to my knowledge, is not approached in many films. So that was unique – but the crime element was derivative of 1985’s Witness. And why must we always bring up Witness when commenting on this film? Witness didn’t start this type of crime genre – that’s correct. But Witness demonstrated the best, or one of the best, of this crime genre. Witness is numero uno, regardless of its chronology in this specific type of crime story – that is, going undercover as a member of a distinctive, often misunderstood and segregated culture to locate a suspect who is also a member.