City of Hope

Director John Sayles brings something rare to American films: a keen sense of purpose. The result is gutsy, knockdown entertainment. Building contractors, politicians, crime bosses and racist cops all contribute to this kaleidoscopic analysis of a New Jersey city riddled with corruption. City Of Hope is a masterly deconstruction of the power plays, vested interests and spheres of influence that run, and often ruin American cities. Unrivalled in its sheer scope and ambition until the TV series The Wire (2002), which it almost certainly influenced. This is Sayles' most satisfactory film.

John Sayles directs "City of Hope". With an atypically fluid camera he weaves his way in and out of a fictional city, dipping into the lives and stories of over 40 characters. As always with Sayles, racism, crime, blue collar anxieties and political corruption are the points of interest. It's a big soap opera, and the dialogue rarely rings true, but the sheer ambition of the film nevertheless wins us over. Sayles opens on Nick Rinaldi, a young man who has spent his life getting free rides from his mafia connected father. Searching for autonomy, Nick quits the easygoing contractor's job provided by his Dad and sets out to make it on his own. Other characters are then introduced: an alderman looking to heal the black inner city, hoodlums trying to make a buck by playing the rich against the poor, contractors who face various moral problems, drug addicts and dope fiends on the streets, city mayors and politicians, lowly builders, two black kids who are perpetually hassled by cops, a professor who is falsely accused of abuse, black militants, the "white establishment", body shop owners plagued by crime...and on and on it goes. The film's title is ironic; there is little hope in sight. All of Sayles' characters seek to extricate themselves from a crumbling society, seek to find some form of flight, but escape is shown to be impossible. The social fabric is too dense, everyone is too connected (yet too bent on individualism), every action has too much of a knock on effect on every other character, for emancipation to prove successful. Aspirations are raised and discarded by Sayles, the wants and needs of some directly affecting the wants and needs of others. Characters are constantly breaking either rules, beliefs or souls, everyone pushed into making compromises, all of which have far reaching effects. This is urban life as warfare, the cast struggling to dodge ripples and repercussions. Take a character called Joe, who makes a deal with the mayor's office which unfortunately eventually leads to the death of a young woman and her baby. It's a domino effect Sayles hopes to capture, a city whose inhabitants believe themselves to be divided, at odds, but are in actuality inextricably connected. For all its ambitions, Sayles' work here is actually fairly superficial (it's a pre WW2 version of leftism). His characters are stock, walking mouthpieces with obvious character arcs, and he rarely goes beyond a kind of one-dimensional understanding of society. It's a film which only pretends to offer complexity, and if you've seen "The Wire", or read some Balzac, you'll find that Sayles lacks a certain sophistication. That said, the film becomes increasingly engrossing as it progresses, and its structure was somewhat novel back in the early 90s (only Kasdan, Spike Lee and Altman were doing similar things). Some have compared the film to Altman, but Altman's working methods are completely different. Altman's ensembles are subtle, improvised, like jazz. Sayles, in contrast, is foremost a writer. All his camera moves and characters are locked in, sealed, rigid. Where Altman's world is indeterministic, gracefully chaotic, Sayles' is blunt, rigid deterministic, his characters not allowed to escape the ink of his pen. It's closer in tone and outlook to early Spike Lee. 7.9/10 – Worth one viewing. Watch "The Wire" instead.

The 6 I gave "City of Hope" is the lowest rating I've given any Sayles film. I'm a bit loathe to give any of his films a poor rating because he makes such though-provoking films, but "City of Hope" never came together for me. Unlike the many different characters and situations he pulled together in his masterful "Lone Star," "City of Hope" felt disjointed, as if the stories where connected only superficially. I suspect it needs another fifteen minutes to pull everything together, but since Sayles has complete control over his films, the lack of end coherence must be blamed on him. There are some wonderful performances in this film, especially Vincent Spano, who seems to have disappeared from film. Well worth checking out, but I'd suggest watching "Lone Star," "Matewan," "Passion Fish," and "Men with Guns" first.

A New Jersey city in which all loyalties are mixed up -- ethnic, racial, personal, family. Some people turn one way or another reflexively. Others feel as if each limb has been tied to a different horse and their slowly being pulled apart. Vincent Spano gets the main credit here but it really belongs to John Sayles who wrote and directed this tale of a near hopeless urban condition. Some guys are obviously "bad" -- the phony Italian mayor. But most of the people we see are just trying to please the people they owe something to, while making a buck on the side if it's possible. Even the cops are given more than one dimension. I don't want to get snobbish but the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote a lot about moral acts. He divided them into two kinds. "Hypothetical imperatives" were acts that came from thinking, "What's in it for me?" And "categorical imperatives" led to different acts that came from thinking, "What if everybody did this?" Only one character is impelled by categorical imperatives -- Joe Morton as the Councilman representing the black and Hispanic district -- and in the end, it seems he may have been won over to the other side. It's hard to tell. The ending of the film is ambiguous. Periodically the viewer has seen David Strathairn as a raving lunatic who goes around shouting things like, "Help!" and "Prices have never been lower!" Everyone pays him civil inattention. He's seen in jail, on the streets, and in crowds. And here, at the end, Vincent Spano is hiding atop a building crane with a bullet in him. His father, Tony Lo Bianco, tries to comfort him and then cries out "Help -- somebody help!" The camera shows us the street far below, lighted with those garish yellow city lamps. It's entirely empty except for a lone figure. It's Strathairn, who waves his arms back at Lo Bianco, shakes a hurricane fence, and begins to shout, "Help!" The likelihood of an improved situation is small. You have to hand it to John Sayles. It took a lot of courage to make this movie, and some of his others. They're filled with corruption and sometimes murder but they're not simple minded. The figures at the top of the hierarchy are sometimes the main cause of urban rot -- as in this case -- but they're not exactly evil. Like everybody else, they're move in a direction towards reward and away from punishment -- only their rewards are greater and their punishments less. At least in this movie. Historically every man who served as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, between 1962 and 2006 was indicted for corruption. It's really an ensemble movie and there are multiple intertwined plots so it's hard to outline them. Overall, it's a picture of life among the working class and the poor. The film doesn't leave anyone with an easy way out. As I say, a courageous movie.

Some people complain about the number of subplots:That's precisely what makes this movie so original and so endearing.This is a small microcosm of characters we follow during two hours without getting bored.Sometimes the director leaves two people talking for two other ones in the same sequence:this technique is an update of what William Wyler used to do notably in "detective story" (1952) and even "best years of our lives"(1946).The sequences are very short and are intertwined with skill;the cast is uniformly good,with Tony LoBianco as the stand-out.This is a very interesting movie ,focusing on such important subjects as responsibility,honesty and dignity.Really worthwhile.

A fantastic movie. Superb. Excellent. A keeper. I am definitely going to rent and re-view Brother from Another Planet. Ensemble type of movie. Low-key score. Dead on performances--everybody tight and sticking to the story, no histrionics or dopey movie-star closeups. If there's a continuum of corruption movies with On the Waterfront on one extreme (intrusive score, ridiculous script, pandering to gorgeous movie stars) and Hands Over the City on the other (realistic portrayal of life with Rod Steiger and lots of extras), then this movie was closer to Hands Over the City. It's not neo-realism, but the way in which everyone's history haunts and thwarts them was excellent. And of course, the last scene is something to rewind and watch over and over again.

first, can someone tell me what genre this movie was? was sayles joking? or were we supposed to care about these heavy-handed caricatures? yes, there are moments of good and intentional black comedy, and that ending shot was classic. but the core drama and pathos driving this movie are more worthy of undergrad filmmakers and daytime soaps. weak and puerile. how did such a cool filmmaker waste his time on this?

In this movie, ambition overreaches result, and the usually clear-sighted John Sayles flounders. There are moments of brilliance, as when the camera turns sharply to pick up new threads in the sprawling interweave of city intrigue that composes the central theme. But the sprawl ultimately proves too unwieldy for even Sayles' considerable talent. I only wish he had succeeded. The backdoor machinery of city politics needs sensitive treatment of the kind Sayles can deliver. But the script falters and the characters seldom rise above uninteresting stereotype. If its true that too many cooks spoil the soup, it's also true that too many soups spoil the cook, no matter how versatile the latter. Here, director-producer-writer-actor Sayles simply raises more urban issues than he deals with effectively: police corruption, brutality, racism, homophobia, kick-backs, drugs, influence peddling, organized crime, with a symbolic love story thrown in - in short, the whole 9 yards that keeps cities operating. Unfortunately, the end result is a force field that pulls apart rather than brings together, making the whole effort appear pointless. Too bad, because such unconventional scope requires unconventional methods of the type Sayles attempts. But I'm not sure it's possible to force such a life-sized tapestry into an ordinary two-hour time frame. Perhaps something on the order of a Godfather trilogy with a central focus on the Nicky character would accommodate the filmmaker's expansive vision. Trouble is, political mavericks and independents like Sayles seldom get the financing necessary for following through. Looks like he may be consigned to work the fringes in the brilliant and committed fashion of Matewan and Eight Men Out, for which there is nevertheless always an audience.

In "City of Hope," John Sayles appears on screen as one of his urban cliche characters, but off screen he's Jerry Lewis, wheeling out his crippled city and his crippled movie and trying to manipulate the viewer into phoning in a pledge or something. Unfortunately for him and his poster-child city, the kid is thoroughly unlovable. Sayles' fictitious Hudson City tries to be a composite of real-life New Jersey industrial towns, but it ends up being just a laundry list of big-city problems--poverty, racism, bad government-- slapped up on the big screen with Sayles saying nothing more than Isn't This Awful? and Don't You Want to Do Something About It? This might work if we were given more reason to care, but the characters never get a chance to become more than cartoon characters in a one dimensional place. I live in a big city, but if someone tried to get me to see "City of Hope" again, I'd split for the suburbs.

"City of Hope": Let writer/director John Sayles pull you into one huge, HUGE, swirling Swirling SWIRLING mmmMMesSsmEEEesSSSMsmeSss of corruption. A big city has all the typical problems. Everyone operates realistically – i.e., you scratch my back, maybe I'll scratch yours. Right and wrong are lost concepts. Social and political survival tactics are practiced by the hunters and the hunted. No one is clean. Deals are made. Victims are collateral damage. It is a realistic story, with slightly enlarged dramatic characters. You won't laugh. (P.S. - See John Sayles film "The Secret of Roan Inish". It is nothing like "City of Hope" but it's amazing and wonderful.)