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Rejoining society, rebuilding one's life, seeking a fulfilling job, leaving behind those 16 months in prison and that damned car theft. 22-year-old Leo wants nothing more. His friend Willie will step forward to help him and try to cushion the impact with that world he's been away from for a year and a half. But the clash with the new life will inevitably be tougher than Leo could have expected.
Halfway between De Palma's "Carlito's Way" and Scorsese's "Goodfellas", James Gray is today regarded as one of the most promising and talented American directors. Those born between the '60s and '70s: people like Paul Thomas Anderson, Andrew Dominik, Jeffrey Chandor, Bennett Miller, and others. "The Yards" is the second chapter of his filmography, and it is a title consistent with a cinematic journey that Gray will continue until the 2007 release of the film "We Own the Night". From then on, the New Yorker's focus will shift toward other kinds of genres.
James Gray is a name that has never really warmed the hearts of critics and the public. His films are too "classic" and linear to carve out a niche in today's film market. Shooting a thriller without using CGI or repetitive explosions seems to have become impossible, which is why those who remain faithful to a certain way of filmmaking, and perhaps have more talent than many others, find themselves stuck in the background of scheduling drip-fed to the threshold of anonymity. "The Yards," while not being a masterpiece, is a work that can be used as a "revealing film" of a parallel reality to the mega-productions of the new millennium. A film that saw the light in 2000, a fundamental break towards that inevitable flattening of the seventh art into the chaos of glossy films, tailor-made for the general public and stuffed with increasingly childish scripts. Alien to all this, Gray molds a noir/thriller with well-defined characteristics and references to the "masters" that are all too clear. In addition to the already mentioned De Palma and Scorsese, Gray has a lot of Clint Eastwood's solid classicism and the typically metropolitan poetry of Michael Mann. The darker, thrilling, gangster side of De Palma and Scorsese finds its match in the political and "denunciatory" vision of the old Clint. Because even before configuring itself as a thriller, "The Yards" is an investigative film that unveils and puts against the wall the facets of American corruption, in this case in the field of railway and subway contracts in New York. Every metropolitan world has its laws, its codes, its violence, and in the "metropolitan trilogy" of "Little Odessa", "The Yards", "We Own the Night", Gray punctuates all this with gunshots in the dark nights of the "Big Apple", a sort of "fetish city" for the director, who set all his films in New York.
"The Yards" is a film that revisits stylistic elements already seen on the big screen, but does so with the awareness of a staging that belongs solely to Gray. Splendid the nocturnal cinematography and claustrophobic curated by Harris Savides and the profoundly paced rhythm of the film, a nod to that classicism that seems now lost. In the background, the soundtrack by Howard Shore, further emphasizing the dramatic atmosphere of the film. It's also easy to trace a completely personal take on the analysis of the internal disintegration of the family, another basic element in the other two films that make up this sort of Gray's "triptych". Characters torn between difficult loves, internal family issues, and the will to improve their economic conditions. In the background, the sound of bullets.
Having learned the lesson from the masters of the craft, Gray reinterprets everything in a personal form through a solid directing made up of slow movements, dolly shots, and close-ups, always exalting the visual and emotional drama of the story. Along with all this, unfortunately, there is a flaw that has infiltrated most American filmmakers: the inability to steer away from cheap rhetoric that often appears without real necessity. A sort of final outburst to embellish a story that would probably have benefited more by remaining in the shadow of doubt and infamy. In this sense, the finale degrades into contrivances that clash with the entire filmic structure Gray had previously created.
An impressive cast with names like Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, James Caan, and the duo of Oscar winners Ellen Burstyn and Faye Dunaway. Paradoxically, the least successful is the protagonist, Leo, played by Mark Wahlberg.
A unique, personal work with some flaws and various merits. A film and an author deserving of greater consideration.
Halfway between De Palma's "Carlito's Way" and Scorsese's "Goodfellas", James Gray is today regarded as one of the most promising and talented American directors. Those born between the '60s and '70s: people like Paul Thomas Anderson, Andrew Dominik, Jeffrey Chandor, Bennett Miller, and others. "The Yards" is the second chapter of his filmography, and it is a title consistent with a cinematic journey that Gray will continue until the 2007 release of the film "We Own the Night". From then on, the New Yorker's focus will shift toward other kinds of genres.
James Gray is a name that has never really warmed the hearts of critics and the public. His films are too "classic" and linear to carve out a niche in today's film market. Shooting a thriller without using CGI or repetitive explosions seems to have become impossible, which is why those who remain faithful to a certain way of filmmaking, and perhaps have more talent than many others, find themselves stuck in the background of scheduling drip-fed to the threshold of anonymity. "The Yards," while not being a masterpiece, is a work that can be used as a "revealing film" of a parallel reality to the mega-productions of the new millennium. A film that saw the light in 2000, a fundamental break towards that inevitable flattening of the seventh art into the chaos of glossy films, tailor-made for the general public and stuffed with increasingly childish scripts. Alien to all this, Gray molds a noir/thriller with well-defined characteristics and references to the "masters" that are all too clear. In addition to the already mentioned De Palma and Scorsese, Gray has a lot of Clint Eastwood's solid classicism and the typically metropolitan poetry of Michael Mann. The darker, thrilling, gangster side of De Palma and Scorsese finds its match in the political and "denunciatory" vision of the old Clint. Because even before configuring itself as a thriller, "The Yards" is an investigative film that unveils and puts against the wall the facets of American corruption, in this case in the field of railway and subway contracts in New York. Every metropolitan world has its laws, its codes, its violence, and in the "metropolitan trilogy" of "Little Odessa", "The Yards", "We Own the Night", Gray punctuates all this with gunshots in the dark nights of the "Big Apple", a sort of "fetish city" for the director, who set all his films in New York.
"The Yards" is a film that revisits stylistic elements already seen on the big screen, but does so with the awareness of a staging that belongs solely to Gray. Splendid the nocturnal cinematography and claustrophobic curated by Harris Savides and the profoundly paced rhythm of the film, a nod to that classicism that seems now lost. In the background, the soundtrack by Howard Shore, further emphasizing the dramatic atmosphere of the film. It's also easy to trace a completely personal take on the analysis of the internal disintegration of the family, another basic element in the other two films that make up this sort of Gray's "triptych". Characters torn between difficult loves, internal family issues, and the will to improve their economic conditions. In the background, the sound of bullets.
Having learned the lesson from the masters of the craft, Gray reinterprets everything in a personal form through a solid directing made up of slow movements, dolly shots, and close-ups, always exalting the visual and emotional drama of the story. Along with all this, unfortunately, there is a flaw that has infiltrated most American filmmakers: the inability to steer away from cheap rhetoric that often appears without real necessity. A sort of final outburst to embellish a story that would probably have benefited more by remaining in the shadow of doubt and infamy. In this sense, the finale degrades into contrivances that clash with the entire filmic structure Gray had previously created.
An impressive cast with names like Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, James Caan, and the duo of Oscar winners Ellen Burstyn and Faye Dunaway. Paradoxically, the least successful is the protagonist, Leo, played by Mark Wahlberg.
A unique, personal work with some flaws and various merits. A film and an author deserving of greater consideration.
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Other reviews
By Hellring
"James Gray molds an essential debut work, free of citations and unnecessary cinematic frills."
"Little Odessa is a 'dry' film, classic in form and substance, which manages to find its well-defined place in the gangster genre."
