Raymond De Felitta’s new film ‘City Island’ takes audiences into the world of the members of the Rizzo family who live in the quaint fishing community of City Island on the outskirts of New York. Some of the family members, namely father, Vince (Andy Garcia) and daughter, Vivian (Dominik Garcia-Lorido) have been living furtive, secretive lives and one’s sense that all this furtiveness will spill out at the end in a devestating way proves true.
This was a strong, compelling drama with the feature being the cast’s clear, incisive portrayals. Andy Garcia plays the main character Vince, a regular working class man holding down a position as a prison officer. Now middle-aged he still holds onto one dream, to become an actor. He believes that his conservative wife, Joyce, wouldn’t understand this part of him, so every week he tells Joyce that he is going to play poker on the night that he takes acting classes.
Vince is also dogged by one other secret that he is determined will never see the light of day. When he was a young lad he had an affair with a woman that led to the couple having an illegitimate son, Tony. Too immature to handle the responsibility he fled the relationship and his obligations. The movie starts on an ominous note. The jail in which Vince works receives a new prisoner, and Vince knows straight away that this prisoner is Tony, his long last son. Vince now is face to face with a huge skeleton and shadow from his past.
Garcia has the film’s strongest scene that sees him auditioning for a role in a new Martin Scorsese film. Before acasting director, first off, he gives a terrible, embarrassing audition, doing a Marlon Brando take on the part. As he is leaving the audition, she calls him back, and asks him to give another reading, requesting that he plays the part as if he was at work, a prison officer talking to an inmate. Vince rips into the reading and as a result gets a call back.
The supporting cast are strong; Julianna Marguiles as the fiery Joyce, Steven Strait as Tony, Dominik Garcia-Lorido as Vivian, a university student working as a pole dancer to support herself after losing her scholarship, Ezra Miller as Vince’s son, hooked on searching web cam sites on the net, Emily Mortimer as Vince’s acting friend, Molly, and an ever quirky Alan Arkin as his encouraging drama coach.
In the film’s penultimate scene, Molly comments on the family drama that she sees before her and says, ‘it’s all a bit Greek to me’. Yes, ‘City Island’, and the fortunes of the Rizzo family as they totter on the edge, does have all the intensity and power of a classic Greek drama!