Gloria

I never really believed a second of this movie -- it feels like contrived Hollywood schlock. But I enjoyed it anyway. Sharon Stone's performance is fun, and her wardrobe alone is worth the price of admission. There's also one of the best car chases I've seen in recent years.

CONTAINS SPOILERS

On the whole a really disappointing offering from Sidney Lumet which I would rate at 3/4 out of 10. I just felt that there was little to no chemistry between Gloria and Nicky throughout the whole film as she seemed intent on calling him "kid" all of the time - and I mean ALL the time. It's even more annoying that the makers of this film felt it necessary to use this ploy to show how Stone was trying to keep her distance from "the kid". Plain annoying and unnecessary.

I found the ending of the film to be a sequence of very unbelievable occurrences. It's very odd that a bunch of "gangsters" would let Nicky go free when he knew that they had murdered his family. To think in realistic terms, it would be a conceivable possibility that when he grows he may just be a bit angry at these supposed gangsters for killing every member of his family and would be after them. Instead he goes free as Lumet presents us with a set of blundering, gun-waving idiots who are summed up by their pursuit of a bright yellow(!) floppy disk. I didn't see 'comedy' on the genre listing but the ending - and for the most part the whole thing - had me laughing for all the wrong reasons.

If anyone hasn't seen this one already, I would say don't bother you haven't missed anything. Even for Stone and Lumet fans(like me before this), I would definitely steer clear. Even if the reason is no more than Stone's accent - I agree with some of the other users, it is ridiculous and does seem plenty overdone at times.

Gloria (Sharon Stone) is released from prison in her party dress. Her parole is in Florida but she immediately travels to New York City anyways. She wants her money from mobster boyfriend Kevin (Jeremy Northam) after taking the rap and spending three years in prison. Nicky is a young boy being hunted by Kevin's gang. His father had stolen a computer disk and given it to him as he goes on the run. The boy is alone after his family is massacred. When Kevin refuses to pay Gloria, she decides to take the boy.

Sharon Stone is doing some overacting. It's the heart of the problem and her greatest sin is that she's not Gena Rowlands. Gena shows glimpses of her heart but Sharon is doing an acting bit. There is some reworking of the premise but that is not solving anything. In the end, it all falls upon the chemistry between Sharon and the kid. If she calms down and has more time with the boy, the relationship would actually have the room to breathe. If taken as its own movie, this is marginally fine. As a remake, it is a step below.

Gloria is released from prison having done her time the right way and never mentioning anything about her mobster boyfriend Kevin or his boss Ruby. She returns to find that he has not kept his end of the bargain. Also in Kevin's custody is Nicky Nuñez, a 6 year old boy whose family was killed for a disk of incriminating information. Gloria feels that the murder of a child is a step further than she can deal with and takes him and the disk. As the mob hunt them down Gloria realises her chances of survival are slim and tries to work out how to save Nicky.

I expected nothing from this when I sat to watch it – in fact I was genuinely surprised when I saw that Sidney Lumet had directed it, as I had expected a trashy thriller-come-comedy of some sort. However the mood of the piece is set out early on when Nicky's family is murdered by Sean. This is a powerful and unpleasant scene in the film – not overly gory but moving. The main thread of the film is the old `hooker with a heart of gold' type of thing and I must admit that this element is often it's weakest part. It's here that I felt old ground was being treaded and that the sentimentality was allowed to get a little out of hand. This is particularly evident in the final 10 minutes (awful ending by the way) but it raises it's head several times during the film where `Gloria learns valuable life lessons about herself' etc.

Happily for the most part this is offset by a some good thrills – such as some good car chases, moments of violence and a good sense of menace from the mobsters. Stone has a difficult role. It is one that could be swimming in it's sentimentality. She doesn't totally succeed (her accent is a little forced at times) but she carries it reasonably well. Figueroa has an even harder role in being the cute kid. Sadly for the most part he is the `cute kid' and is a little irritating but he does have a few strong scenes that show there is more to him and he is good considering his age. Northam is OK, Starr brings real menace, Scott and Moriarty have clearly both been cast to add some class to the film but only have small roles.

Overall this is a reasonable film. To some extent we've seen it before and the sentimentality really threatens to sink it at times. However a real sense of menace and some strong scenes make this a better film and the thriller scenes, although not great, are solid enough when combined with these to make the film watchable – just don't expect this to be without big areas of weakness though.

Any film that bills itself a remake of John Cassavetes's 1980 'Gloria' is obviously putting itself up to an incredibly high standard, and without the benefit of the doubt of originality. This 1999 version thus not surprisingly fails to live up to its namesake, but if you go in resigned to this inevitability, you can still enjoy it albeit reservedly.

The real problem with this take is the writing. The concept is familiar enough to keep the essential plot elements together while still trying to do something different enough to hold our interest. To this end, the inciting incident near the start is done chillingly enough to give us hope that this might be good on its own merits. Unfortunately, as the film progresses, the original parts - save some nice one-liners - are executed progressively less gracefully. The pretext behind Gloria's pairing with the kid isn't 100% convincing (though could be worse) and the conclusion is decidedly sloppy. The plot feels by that time, as one writer said of a TV episode from many years ago, to hang together about as well as a soggy potato chip.

Fortunately, director Sid Lumet salvages what he can, ramping up the heat and the action as much as is tolerably possible to keep us entertained. Sharon Stone as a noticeably-younger take on the title character adds more than enough sex appeal - physical and emotional - to her character to hold our interest even when the script goes awry, as it often does. She plays the character with a lighter and somewhat less intense demeanor than Gena Rawlings did, but with just as much energy, and her airier way is arguably justified by the age differential. She definitely didn't deserve a Golden Razzie nomination for the role, but Jean-Luke Figueroa as Nicky, the kid, arguably did. On the other hand, he didn't have much to go on, either, the script withholding from him the kind of rough edge and from his relationship with Gloria the intense, almost romantic bittersweet tension that was there in the original.

"Less intense" is becoming something of a refrain in this review. It's an assessment that doesn't apply to *most* of the action but certainly to the interstices. But perhaps this too could not have been helped no matter what the script, performers or director: as other reviewers have pointed out, the original 'Gloria' was above all set in the gritty, dangerous New York that in hindsight existed only briefly from the 1960s through the 1980s. A 1999 version would have had to be a period piece to capture the same spirit as the original and even then would have been both a tougher task and a tougher sell.

Overall I'd give it a solid B-: worthwhile to see Sharon Stone as much as or moreso than to see her as the eponymous character, and good for a light, laid-back evening in to chill down after a stressful day, but don't go in looking for anything deep, analytical or thought-provoking.