"City by the Sea" (2002) - Movie Review

There is a strongest sense for humans to come into conclusion quite immediately. It is undeniably present in each one of us. A person who would have mastered the art of patience will have an instinct to finish off on a topic. What is this inner desire to tie a knot by our own means? Quietly in our living room we watch the daily brutalities over the TV and run a profile for ourselves over the killer or the victim. The media arranges this not as the form of information but as a reality judgment showing one family at a time. Such has become the basis of our living that our existentialism survives on the character operation on others. “City by the Sea” takes this to see the relationship in a family tainted by Vincent LaMarca’s (Robert De Niro) father who got executed for a baby been killed.

The sound of it is good enough to judge his entire generation. Such has been his child hood for Vincent that he becomes a cop and dedicates himself to it. Yet he fails as a father to his son, Joey (James Franco). Divorced, incapable of drawing himself in visiting his son in presence of security personnel he has been out of touch with him for a long time. The details are revealed to us as the story goes on. Joey is a junkie and a drug deal gone wrong ends him killing the local dealer who works for a drug king in the neighbourhood, Spyder (William Forsythe). Vincent eventually finds out his son is involved and he revisits his mistakes.

The city of Long Beach is taken as the prime center of the crimes happening. Director Michael Caton-Jones shows a desolated and looted city advertising its failure through the ruins of its buildings. Even though the actual city is not like this, Caton-Jones gives a small city begging for the crimes to happen. No one is on the street except dealers and junkies. It symbolically represents the abandonment Vincent undergone with his dad and then with his son. This is a not rushing thriller. This is not an emotionally charged piece of work either. The film is stoic because how the characters are undisturbed externally by the happenings. The confrontations are nothing short of reality but carry the weight of dramatic cinematic work. There is a balance in which we see these people manage to exist in a land of daily lives and the emotion required for a drama film.

Vincent with his experience as policeman knows what is going to come of it. He has distanced himself far from anything resembling affection. He lives above a lovely lady named Michelle (Frances McDormand) and both of them understand their needs pushing 40s. Vincent knows the emotional complexities in committing and the last thing is to be committed again for him. Michelle gets it but when the physicality is exhausted and while lying on the bed ogling at the ceiling beckons her to know this person by her side of the bed. “I don’t want to marry you but I just want to know you” is what she says. And she gets more than she asked for, complications in the past for Vincent.

The film has a characteristic maturity even in a junkie played particularly well by James Franco. We see him as a junkie and when he wanders in the first scene with a guitar to sell, it is pathetic, sad and also angry to see the influence of drugs on a good kid. Vincent can be genuinely careless about the possibilities of dangers to his son but he speaks sparsely open to any one including Michelle. So when he spills out his guts in the most crucial scene in the film, it needs De Niro to hit the target and find the note in what is over the top and what is satisfactorily abundant. De Niro as always delivers.

It is not an affecting thriller or emotional drama all the way. There is strangeness in this characterization and honesty in approach. It might not be colourful but so is our regular life. In “City by the Sea”, the calmness of the film attributes into a time frame which happens in couple of months or so. It forms up such that with a relaxed and set life of Vincent, there is something missing, something he has missed and something he should take up responsibility for.