Gravesend

I love films like this. Pacy, lean and funny. It will no doubt draw fire for being a bit Scorcese-esque, and admittedly, the character Zane owes a lot to De Niro in Mean Streets, but in fact the film actually resembles L'Haine a lot more. The difficult customer scene is very funny, and the whole thing was neatly finished. Great stuff.

This is good work. I heard that Salvatore Stabile didn't have a lot of money to put the project together. Also, I heard that the actors worked for free. That is true dedication to a project. I salute the cast for working with the director. A friend of mine gave me a copy of the soundtrack. This is what it all boils down to. There are no expensive special effects or high price actors. This is what America needs, A good cast that asks what they can do for the movie, instead of what a movie can do for them.

Gravesend takes place in a beaten down Brooklyn neighborhood near Coney Island. Immediately, it is clear that the young writer/director of this film takes all his energy and inspiration for his characters out of the streets for this film, and does so convincingly. Much of this films' buzz centered around the fact that the director was young and made the film at a very low-budget, adding to this films rough urban flavor. Many critics deplored the film because of its' repeatative non-stop pointless fights among the friends, however I believe they were an essential part of the film. We learn to dislike most of the characters, often glad that their lives aren't ours, and at times the dialog can be suprisingly humorous given the cynical nature of this film. Tony Tucci alone is reason enough to see this movie, playing a violent, rough, worthless twenty-something who is neither a good friend, good person, and more or less continually fails at what he does throughout the coarse of the night. With a better written plot and storyline, this film could have done what Mean Streets did for Martin Scorecese for this young director, but unfortunately falls short. However, to anyone interested in film and film making, highly recommended.

While it is indeed commendable that this guy made a movie at the age of 19 for 5000 (or whatever the myth for this one is), is does not excuse the fact that this movie is a terrible, boring, poorly conceived piece of garbage. The acting is uniformly terrible, the dialogue inane. Avoid this movie at all costs. One of the worst films I've ever seen.

Review of "Gravesend"

Quite gripping tale of 4 young men from the ghetto without a chance in life who find themselves in an uncontrollable situation after a careless prank goes totally wrong. From this moment on they are doomed, yet they desperately try and retrieve the situation the only way they know how - the criminal way, and this is when things spiral out of all proportion.

The raw talents and amateurism of this filmmaker really suit the mood of the whole film and its well worth checking out if you like similar themed movies.