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This is a very visual picture. A lot of time and thought was put into how this movie would be shot. The city by the sea is Long Beach, New York. The ruin and decay is quite vivid as well as the filmmakers drew a fantastic picture of how magical this seaside city once was. They never took you back, no pictures of what it once was, just the descriptive memories of the place in contrast to the bleakness it is now. A good backdrop for bad choices and running away. Robert De Niro (Showtime) stars at Detective Vincent La Marca, a former Long Beach resident with a very colorful past. He has the honor of being the son of the first man to commit a murder in Long Beach. His father Angelo La Marca was executed by electric chair in 1959 for the kidnap and murder of a baby. Vince was eight at the time and the arresting officer became a surrogate father to him. This is the main reason for him becoming a cop. The other to overcome the stigma of his father’s sins and to never cast doubts on how good of a person he is. This is until his son is the prime suspect in a murder too. The movie gets going when Joey Nova AKA Joey La Marca (Deuces Wild) is trying to sell his guitar on the once famous Long Beach boardwalk. He is a junkie and needs to score. He hooks up with another dealer Snake (Brian Tarantina of The Talented Mr. Ripley) and they get high then go looking for another dealer named Picasso (Jay Boryea), but the deal goes sour and Picasso ends up getting stabbed with his own knife. They toss him into the river and he washes up the next morning on the side. Cop La Marca and partner Reg Duffy (George Dzundza of Species II) head to Long Beach to get the story on their dead guy. In the meantime, the guy Picasso worked for, Spyuder (William Forsythe), is looking for Joey and his four grand (Joey didn’t take the money since Picasso still had it in his pockets when he washed up). Snake gets scared and turns himself in, claiming Joey did it all. This is about the time Vince learns that Joey Nova is really his son, the boy he walked out on years earlier. With two police departments and Spyuder looking for Joey, you would think he wouldn’t be so hard to find. Well Reg gets snuffed and it looks like Joey did it, only he didn’t, but now he is a cop killer in the minds of the police and now he is really wanted. This story is full of details, and images. We have the bitchy former wife of Vince, Maggie La Marca (Patti Lupone of State and Main) the current girlfriend Michelle (Frances McDormand of Almost Famous), who after a year of sleeping with the guy is just now finding out who he really is or was. Then there is Joey’s former junkie girlfriend Gina (Eliza Dushku of The New Guy), whose young baby is really Joey’s son, baby named Angelo. Director Michael Caton-Jones did a wonderful job bringing all this detail to life without overwhelming the audience. The use of imagery was fabulous. My only beef with editing was with Joey’s football ring. They made a point to show this scene where he was forced to give it up for some smack, he didn’t want to because he was saving it for his son, but didn’t have a choice. Well, that ring shows up on his finger in a later scene with no mention of how he could have got it back. In fact there was really no way he could have got it back, so that ring should not have been on his finger. Also appearing in City by the Sea was Anson Mount (Crossroads), Drena De Niro (At First Sight), Michael P. Moran and Nestor Serrano. Outside of the small editing issue with the ring, this was an outstanding movie. The acting was well done and I can still see Long Beach of the 50’s in my head even though I have never seen it before. I give City by the Sea a nine on the About-Movies.com scale.
Last updated: Thursday, March 20, 2008 02:48:09 AM Click Here to get back into frames.
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