On G List of Movie Reviews
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Gotham (1988)
Rate:
6
Viewed:
10/19
10/19:
Gotham, which was originally titled as The Dead Can't Lie, is an okay neo-noirish
picture about the supernatural.
The movie starts out well with Tommy Lee Jones, who has the best deadpan face since Walter Matthau, receiving
a visitor before being paid a princely sum of money to take on the missing person case. It turns out it's his
dead wife of ten years, but he thinks the whole thing is a joke. The husband finally absolves himself by passing
along the ghost of her to the private dick.
Along the way is a lot of steamy sex with Virginia Madsen going nude which is more than enough. It seems the
jewels play a big role as they're the rara avis straight out of
The Maltese Falcon. Yet despite the great backdrop, Gotham
completely falls apart in the final twenty minutes, leaving me with nothing but a sheer waste of celluloid.
I never understood why the stupid husband gave away one million dollars worth of jewels just like that. What
was he trying to accomplish?
It'll be easy to categorize Gotham as an all-time bad movie, but Tommy Lee Jones' performance is enjoyable.
Kevin Jarre, the screenwriter who also did Glory,
Judgment Night, and Tombstone,
complements him well in terms of dialogue, but Frederic Forrest as a Russian Orthodox priest is a mistake,
adding nothing to the film. Virginia Madsen looks beautiful but wears too much makeup. Nevertheless,
she gets to deliver the best line of the film: "There's nothing fair about me, Eddie. I start the game owning
Boardwalk and Park Place, and everybody pays."
All in all, Gotham has a workable story with many excellent lines to make for a good neo-noir movie
about the supernatural, but throwing it away in the last twenty minutes is inexcusable.