REVIEW: CITY BY THE SEA - I voiced two concerns last week in my preview of City by the Sea, starring Robert DeNiro as a New York City homicide detective (Vincent LaMarca) trying to protect his druggie son, Joey, who is wanted for murder: 1) As Joey, James Franco's considerable talent would be wasted in a role that basically required him to look really grubby, hide in abandoned buildings, and make clandestine calls from pay phones. 2) Director Michael Caton-Jones and screenwriter Ken Hixon would cut out the heart of the movie's source material -- a 1997 Esquire article about the real Vincent LaMarca, his troubled son, and his infamous father who was put to death in the electric chair in 1959 for kidnapping and murdering a baby -- in favor of a more conventional Hollywood story; in other words, they'd forsake character development and dance around the complicated generational angst of this family in order to package it as a suspenseful crime thriller. Surprisingly, the movie almost made me forget both of these concerns -- almost. First, there's actually some substance to Franco's role. The movie opens with his strung-out character trying to hock a guitar on the now-dilapidated Long Beach boardwalk to score some drugs. After "getting well," as they say, Joey and a friend meet a dealer to get some more; a confrontation ensues and the dealer's bloated body is found the next morning washed up by the river. This first section of the film is wholly devoted to Joey and the event that sparks the rest of the story. DeNiro's character doesn't even appear until 15 to 20 minutes in, which I thought was a bold choice considering Vincent is really the central character of the story. It shows that the filmmakers wanted to make Joey a fully-rounded character rather than merely a cog to propel the plot forward. Franco has the same brooding sensibility that James Dean had (he got a Golden Globe nomination last year for playing Dean in a TNT original movie) and he brings some nuance here to the traditional strung-out son character. When he tells his mom (Patti Lupone) that he hates his life as a junkie and wants to get better, we immediately dismiss his claims just as she does because, like her, we've heard it all before (mostly in movies, of course). But Franco seems so genuinely fractured and beaten down that we can't help but sympathize with his character, even if we are just being conned by his charms. Slate's David Edelstein says it better than I can: "Franco is epically strung out: He doesn't have the dead eyes you see in most junkies; his burning orbs signal there's still a soul to save." I also credit Franco for being willing to get so dirty -- and by that I mean physically, though it applies to his character's emotional condition as well. He's so down-and-out that he makes Jared Leto in Requiem For A Dream look like he's going to his senior prom by comparison. You can practically smell the stink coming off him. As for my second concern, City by the Sea is a lot less formulaic and predictable than most critics give it credit for. In fact, up until the last half-hour or so, Caton-Jones stays focused on character over plot, showing how the LaMarca family is unable to break the cycle of anguish caused by Vincent's father. It's worth noting that DeNiro's character spends more time examining his life and the choices he has made -- like never really being a father to Joey after he and Joey's mother went through a bad divorce -- than he does playing cop, piecing together clues to try and prove his son's innocence. It may be the only time in movie history where a cop is told by his commanding officer to get off the case, take a week off, and the cop actually listens! Alas, the traditional crime movie machinations kick in -- the classic "partner killed" plot device is invoked, a drug dealer named Spider (William Forsythe) wants Joey dead for killing his employee -- all of which leads to an awkwardly-staged shoot-out finale that ties everything too neatly together. It ruins what was otherwise a fairly grim, intelligent character study on fathers and sons, and the difficulty of trying to escape one's past.

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