Bullets Over Broadway

Buy This Item Bullets Over Broadway  Available from Amazon  Click 'BUY IT NOW' to get price.  on 11-28-2008     One of Woody Allen's best films of the '90s, <I>Bullets over Broadway</I> stars John Cusack as a virtual Woody surrogate, a neurotic, Jazz Age writer whose new play sounds wooden and unrealistic to a low-level mobster (Chazz Palminteri) assigned to watch over his boss's actress-girlfriend (Jennifer Tilly). When the hood starts contributing better story ideas and dialogue than what the official playwright can conjure, questions (not unlike those of <I>Amadeus</I>) about the price we pay to make art at the expense of other responsibilities are intriguingly raised. Palminteri gives a very interesting performance as the enforcer waking up to the desperate (and almost feminine) demands of his own creative psyche, and Dianne Wiest (who won an Oscar), Tracey Ullman, Jim Broadbent, and Jennifer Tilly are very funny together playing the ensemble cast of Cusack's play. <I>--Tom Keogh</I> Reader Reviews Apparently, as long as it involves a New York City scenario Woody Allen is more than happy to take a run at a plot that involves that locale in some way. Here it is the Great White Way- Broadway during its heyday in the Prohibition Era 1920's that gets his attention (Broadway was also the subject of his classic Broadway Danny Rose). What really makes this plot line very, very funny and makes the film work however is the plot twist of interspersing semi-serious production of a play with nefarious (and deadly) gangster activity. Here a struggling (weren't they all and presumably still are) Greenwich Village writer has a thoughtful dramatic play in search of a backer and as the story progresses a gangster `ghostwriter'. Presto, up comes one backer-with a problem- his `doll' wants in on the play and (on the side) he needs to stay one or two steps ahead of his gangster rivals. These antics drive the play nicely as does a brilliant performance by Diane Wiest doing a fantastic send up of Gloria Swanson as the has-been actress searching for a comeback in Billy Wilder's classic Hollywood Boulevard. This one is definitely the five stars, with no hype needed. See it.

Bullets Over Broadway Available from Amazon Price: Click 'BUY IT NOW' to get price. Updated on 11-28-2008.

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