Harold Becker’s excellent and supremely underrated 1996 drama City Hall is always a great re-watch and it definitely deserves a Blu-ray upgrade. It’s a comfort-blanket type film for me – I just like watching it. This came out during the “Screaming Mad” Al Pacino era (Scent of a Woman, Carlito’s Way, Heat, Donnie Brasco, The Devil’s Advocate, The Insider, Any Given Sunday) and his forceful, emotionally invested performance as the beleaguered mayor of NYC is one of his most underappreciated. Boasting a roster of big-gun studio screenwriters (Bo Goldman, Paul Schrader, Nicholas Pileggi, Ken Lipper), the dialogue is smart, the plotting is believable, and the themes are still topical. Also, it’s another fantastic instance of massive Character Actor POWER: Danny Aiello utterly owns his scenes, and then you have the likes of Martin Landau, David Paymer, Richard Schiff, Nestor Serrano, Larry Romano, Anthony Franciosa, Tamarie Tunie, Lindsay Duncan, and John Slattery(!) filling the edges with colorful supporting work. John Cusack and Bridget Fonda are solid if outmatched by the gusto of Pacino, who looked purposefully tired and haggard with a voice that sounded coarse and strained, which all added to the realistic nature of the character and his endless pursuit of justice. This is one of those sturdy, dramatically effective movies that didn’t register with critics or at the box office, and for some reason, still has never found the due respect that it deserves during its endless cycle on the cable channels and in DVD bins. It might not be brilliant, but it’s endlessly watchable, and as usual for Becker, there’s an unforced steadiness to his directing that keeps everything moving along at a brisk clip, aided by the classy stylings of cinematographer Michael Seresin. Boasts a superb score by Jerry Goldsmith.
Podcasting Them Softly 