Clever writing and lovable characters in City Island

Mary Vuk Sussman: City Island is a suspenseful and fun movie. I can understand why it has become a “word-of-mouth” hit. It made me laugh, shriek, and kick my feet. Directed by Raymond De Felitta, the movie takes more than a few unexpected twists and turns.

Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia), a tough-talking prison guard, is the patriarch of an Italian family and a third-generation City Islander. City Island, formerly a fishing village, is a residential community offshore from New York’s Bronx, with a small-town feel and great views of the Manhattan skyline. Both towns are showcased nicely.

Vince’s decision to try to fulfill a long-denied desire to be an actor and secretly take acting classes in Manhattan gets the story off and running. The action careens hilariously out of control, and even flirts with tragedy at times. All of the characters have secret lives which eventually get out of the closet and into play. Garcia turns in a very good performance as Vince. Julianna Margulies, who plays Vince’s wife, Joyce, and Emily Mortimer as Molly Charlesworth, Vince’s classmate and confidante, are vibrant and convincing in their roles. Alan Arkin is perfect as Vince’s crusty old drama teacher.

Larry Sussman: You want to hug this movie because it is filled with nutty, yet believable characters who I found myself talking about two days after I saw the movie. You care about them and don’t want to nitpick about their wacko quirks. You believe that prison guard Vince, a hard-ass on the job, would hide a cowardly past secret from his wife. You watch the family yell at one another during dinner over minor problems knowing that the shouting is used to hide far more destructive skeletons.

You are so wrapped up in the characters and laughing so hard at their faults that you willingly suspend disbelief. That’s good writing. It takes a clever author to write a movie based on a guard meeting a new prisoner and realizing that this is the son he fathered and abandoned some 25 years earlier. Vince also sees in his bastard son, Tony (Steven Strait), acting abilities that Vince realizes he has as well.

MVS: I liked hard-boiled Vince’s soft side. I liked tough, bitchy Joyce better when she became vulnerable and showed how much she cared. All the characters got turned inside out so you saw their hurts and insecurities. There was danger in all of that, especially when they all “came clean” in the same scene, which was scary and funny at the same time. The movie is all about outward appearances falling away or in some cases being put on for purposes of acting.

LS: My favorite character was Molly, Vince’s confidante in acting school, who sees possibilities and depth in Vince that his wife could not possibly imagine. What an ego boost for a man in his forties meeting a beautiful younger woman who tells him about his potential and is not conning him. She inspires him to act and create memorable characters. The notion that a guard could use his experience to become an actor is great movie escapism.

MVS: Molly was a wonderful character, a good foil for Vince’s insecurities even though she proved to be more complex and enigmatic at the end than we first realized. But I think that she is a con artist even though she gives Vince a good steer. We never really get to understand her whole story. Vince was my favorite character. I felt for him as he faced up to two sarcastic teenage children with plenty of adolescent troubles and a bored and suspicious wife, and his own doubts and insecurities about himself. There was nobility in Vince when he took Tony home with him from the prison, even though Vince doesn’t have the guts to reveal to Tony his true paternity. There was courage in Vince when he decided to take the acting classes, and cowardice when he said instead he was playing poker. His foibles made me laugh a lot, but I really felt for him.

LS: Vinnie, the son (Ezra Miller), also gives men who lust after zaftig women a funny role model. De Felitta has his characters smoking, which in most modern movies would tell the audience that these are bad guys. Here, it’s just another example of people’s faults.

This movie, finally, is about second chances. We always will need prison guards; we can do without actors. Vince wasn’t around for Tony for the first 25 years of Tony’s life. But Vince still has something to offer the son he never knew. That’s a stay-at-home lesson that should give second thoughts to many hit-and-run fathers today.

MVS: I don’t know that this movie actually provides that lesson, but I did think it was funny and very lively.

Mary and Larry Sussman are married. The couple will deliver future film review dialogues.

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