There are clear issues with the script here- the overheated macho posturing, the dim view of its women, the humorless look-at-me nihilism- that the film almost leans into, from its relentlessly dour tone to its highly-pitched performances. But there’s something in Lumet’s direction, in its caustic spareness and jagged spatial constructions, that takes this from screenwriterly cynicism to genuine despair. It’s interesting to look at how, in the Year of the ‘70s, James Gray took a similar concept with We Own The Night to a much more forgiving, operatic place (the final line of Gray’s film is “I love you very much,” this one ends a bit differently). The actual avatar of the ‘70s, however, goes out on a different note, with none of Gray’s Coppola-esque romanticism. Lumet’s late-style synthesis of his Dog Day Afternoon “realism,” now carrying the weight of decades and having passed out of fashion, arrives at something truly black-hearted and emotionally violent. An actors’ showcase, but one that works because it locates their pyrotechnics within a world so thoroughly wracked by emptiness and regret.
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