Night and the City (1992)

It's a bit unengaging. De Niro phones in a Pupkinesque pastiche of a performance from a lackadaisical, pointless script. Lange is OK, but has precious little material to work with. Ultimately, it's not entertaining to watch. For De Niro completists only.

Night and the City is directed by Irwin Winkler and adapted to screenplay by Richard Price from the novel written by Gerald Kersh. It stars Robert De Niro, Jessica Lange, Cliff Gorman, Jack Warden, Alan King, Eli Wallach and Barry Primus. Music is by James Newton Howard and cinematography by Tak Fujimoto. Ambulance chasing lawyer Harry Fabian (De Niro) has grand designs to be a boxing promoter. Unfortunately this ruffles the feathers of a local promoter who is not exactly known for his kindness... It's often unfair to do down a remake of a classic film, with the rule of thumb being we are asked to judge said remake on its own terms. However, Winkler's neo-noir remake of Jules Dassin's brilliant 1950 film noir of the same name just lacks the edginess or urgency to make a mark. It's not down to performances of the cast or the tech production in general, in fact De Niro, Warden and the under written Lange are watchable, while Fujimoto's photography around the New York locations is superlative. Yet the characters as written here, in the shift from postwar London to a thrumming NYC, have no psychological pangs to drive the picture forward. Harry trudges from one slice of idiocy to another, with a big plot development making no sense, and all the time there's ill placed humour hanging over the plot to further compound the feeling we are watching a disjointed attempt at neo-noir nirvana. While the conclusion here is weak and kind of a cheat. The makers dedicated the film to Dassin, that's a nice sentiment, but really they should have honoured him by making a far better movie in the spirit of the great director himself. 5/10

I can honestly say there has only been one or two movies that were so bad I left the theater and refused to watch them. This was one of those movies. I stayed as long as I could but I couldn't bear to stay until the end. I like Jessica Lange and Robert DeNiro and consider them both to be good actors. Thus this was a real disappointment. They have both made much better movies than this one. She's a waitress and he is a lawyer. I thought it was depressing and their first sex scene was carried out with wooden acting. I was on a date so that made it even worse.Don't waste your money.

I just finished watching Robert DeNiro in "Night in the City." DeNiro's classic role as "loser" wannabe "winner" Harry Fabien is perfect especially when teamed up with the beautiful and talented Jessica Lange. Every time it comes to cable I watch it, and probably always will. DeNiro's potrayal of a lawyer who always ends up last and is determined to make a name for himself is flawless. I read another comment about this movie and was prompted to write this in defence of a movie which I adore. I am so very happy to see that Robert DeNiro has "six" movies coming out in the year 2004.