City by the Sea
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City by the Sea | |
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Promotional movie poster for the film |
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Directed by | Michael Caton-Jones |
Produced by | Don Carmody Andrew Stevens Roger Paradiso Dan Klores |
Written by | Ken Hixon |
Starring | Robert De Niro, Eliza Dushku |
Music by | John Murphy |
Cinematography | Karl Walter Lindenlaub |
Editing by | Jim Clark |
Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
Release date(s) | September 6, 2002 October 11, 2002 January 10, 2003 March 21, 2003 |
Running time | 108 min. |
Country | U.S.A. |
Language | English |
Budget | $60,000,000 (estimate) |
Official website | |
Allmovie profile | |
IMDb profile |
City by the Sea is a 2002 film starring Robert De Niro and Frances McDormand. It deals with a family and the problems of wayward youth are set against a man trying to break with his past. It was directed by Michael Caton-Jones.
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[edit] Plot
De Niro plays a veteran street cop, the son of an executed killer. While his father didn't intend to kill the kidnapped child, the son reaps the reputation anyway and decides to be so good that he is beyond reproach. Meanwhile, his son, a drug user with fading memories of high-school athletic glory, gets wrapped up in a drug-related killing and asks his father for help. After a failed marriage and an estranged son suddenly come to the attention of de Niro's current girlfriend, she asks why he won't help his son. He has tried so hard to distance himself that he cannot accept any intrusion into his contentment. His son gets deeper into trouble when the local drug enforcer (played by William Forsythe) kills a cop looking to help de Niro clear his son's name, and the murder is pinned on the son. In the end De Niro sets aside his self-imposed isolation and helps, drawing the enforcer to him.
[edit] Cast
- Robert De Niro as Vincent LaMarca
- Frances McDormand as Michelle
- James Franco as Joey LaMarca
- Eliza Dushku as Gina
- William Forsythe as Spyder
- Patti LuPone as Maggie
- Anson Mount as Dave Simon
- John Doman as Henderson
- Brian Tarantina as Snake
- Drena De Niro as Vanessa Hansen
- Nestor Serrano as Rossi
[edit] Artistic license
Though this film is based on a true story - The murder of James Brown in the mid 90s - it is almost entirely fictitious. Coincidentially, LaMarca's grandfather had committed a kidnapping in 1956, and it is often confused as the basis for the movie. The differences between the film and the events in real life are as follows:
- Vincent LaMarca was a New York City police officer first, and a Long Beach police officer afterward; in the movie it is the opposite.
- LaMarca's son did not kill a man in self defense. His son committed a cold blooded murder, stabbing a man over 60 times and nearly decapitating him.
- LaMarca was not involved in the manhunt for his son. He had retired from the Long Beach police by that time.
- The murder did not take place in Long Beach, New York. It happened in East Rockaway, a few towns over from Long Beach.
- Lamarca's father did not accidentally kill an infant. He kidnapped little Peter Weinberger, walked into the woods with him, put him on the ground face down, and walked away, basically ensuring that the baby would die.[1]
- Long Beach, New York is not the run-down community as portrayed in the film. All of the Long Beach scenes in the film were shot in Asbury Park, NJ, which was intentionally made to look more dilapidated than either town ever was in real life.
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Mark of a murderer" by Mike McAlary, Esquire magazine, 1997