videorama-759-859391 For me this was a disappointment, and rarely am I disappointed by a De Niro film. It's just a standard nothing new film. This is just a routine cop drama, with the always competent De Niro in a not so tough role as a cop, who's very family orientated. Now just having realized his junkie son (Franco) may of been the murderous hand behind the death of a cop, he must find him. Really this is just old territory, in a painfully trite cop drama, the new acting great, Franco, delivering a sincere and powerful performance, as the fleeing son, running scared. Did he or not pull the trigger, or is there more than a story to it. We really don't care, or we have an itch to know, to get our story's worth. Seriously, Franco is the only real reason for warranting a view, while Eliza Dunkshu was strong too as the girlfriend. A kill ninety minute film in the land of ordinary that does try, by evidently fails, as just a sad tale of mislead youth. Do watch for Franco, though.

tieman64 "City by the Sea" is an underrated cop drama by director Michael Jones. Set largely in a dilapidated coastal town, whose ruins allude to the wreckage of our hero's past life, the film stars Robert De Niro as a elderly cop who learns that his son may or may not have committed a murder.The film is poorly written in a number of places, and flirts with too many clichés, but when viewed as a broad, noirish tragedy, works fairly well. Here De Niro's a tired soul who fears that the sins of his father, a brutal murderer, were passed on to him and then to his own son, each generation of men perpetuating and fuelling cycles of violence. De Niro tries to break this cycle.Elevating the film's obvious writing are a young James Franco, who plays a drug addled young man, and Frances McDormand, who's excellent as a single woman living in De Niro's apartment complex. She lends an odd presence to what is the film's most interesting and unconventional subplot.7.9/10 – One of De Niro's better, late career works. See "The Pledge" and "Capturing the Friedmans".

HanPolo This film is just awful. The only redeeming quality this film possesses is that they cast Eliza Dushku.That's it, folks. The people saying that it was good have an optimism complex larger than John Goodman. From Frances McDormand's awkward body language (and face touching) to Bob DeNiro's stilted play-up of father/son tensions to John Forsythe's contrived bad guy persona, this movie is downright terrible. I was surprised to learn it was made in 2002, since the score made it sound like it was from the mid-90s.And the fact that Eliza Dushku is hot doesn't really matter since she disappears 3/4 of the way through the movie after telling Bobby DeNiro that she is going back to using again. This is after the audience got no indication that she was having any trouble, and even witnessed her tell James Franco's character to stay clean earlier on.The film just tries way too hard to be dark. The drug use is visually brief, but referenced throughout. The setting is good (Long Beach, NY), but there's very little past-to-present context besides a few comments by the cast. The father/son element is meant to be two-fold, with DeNiro playing a guy battling his own father and his own son's fates, but by the end of the movie you can tell the writers did not have fun playing with that material.If I could give it negative stars, I would.

wlfgdn This is a story about ugly America and ugly Americans whose incessant greed and self-interest have caused their karma to destroy them and their families. At the center is a heartless and two-faced career NY police officer who makes his living busting everyday people for average offenses while at the same time writing off the murders committed by his own father and son as "mistakes".What we see is ecological karma at work as Mother Earth Gaia or perhaps even Jehovah punishes those who squander precious resources. The central family is typical of New Yorkers with heavy expenses and of the mentality that to have everything is the minimum expected. In one way or another this destroys three successive generations.The director is attempting to portray victimization as something that passes on down, but the plain fact is that each of these generations created their own issues.What I see as different from most, is to look at how much money and time society is forced to spend on these people. All the money made by the husband and wasted by the wife and child to begin with, add to it the expenses for a number of murder investigations, destruction of property, so on and so forth. What makes this dysfunctional family, this tiny group of selfish people, worth any of it? The resources and money that this family has used up would be enough to feed every person in some small countries for years. Better than 95% of the world does not live in a house like this family did, and does not drive cars like they do or eat or dress like they do.Yet we are supposed to find something rewarding about all this. I think not.