Directed by
Buddy Giovinazzo
99 minutes
Rated R
Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
No Way Home
Director Buddy Giovinazzo graduated with a Masters in Cinema from the College of Staten Island and taught film-making at the New York's School of Visual Arts and New York University. No Way Home which he also wrote is a neat little film in the pulp fiction mold that is given a considerable lift by the performances of Tim Roth and Deborah Kara Unger (a Canadian who studied acting at NIDA and who would get her biggest screen credit the following year in David Fincher’s The Game).Roth plays Joey Larabito who has just been paroled after serving 6 years in prison for murder and who returns to his family home on Staten Island. His mother has died and his drug-dealing older brother Tommy (James Russo) lives their with his stripper-wife Lorraine. At first reluctant to welcome Joey, she gradually forms a friendship with him. Meanwhile her relationship with her husband is deteriorating as she cannot avoid the evidence that he is a big-talking loser. .
There are a few issues with the film. Joey’s alleged simple-mindedness is rather uncertainly drawn, Roth loping around like a retard but otherwise surprisingly articulate whilst similarly Unger is not only improbably gorgeous but far too well-spoken for her station. Nor is Giovinazzo good with action notably bungling a bar-room brawl scene with some badly pulled punches (amazingly, Roth hits a brick wall and we can see it give way because it is made of rubber). What really works about the film is the poignancy of the Joey/Lorraine relationship as two people trapped by the tawdriness of their circumstance but aware of something better. It is a pity that Giovinazzo, who should have known better, did not end the film more boldly than he does following through the Joey/Lorraine relationship to a satisfying resolution but for the most part as an urban underbelly story, No Way Home works well enough.
DVD Extras: Theatrical trailer
Available from: Shock Entertainment
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