City by the Sea

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City by the Sea

Promotional movie poster for the film
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) Flag of the United States September 6, 2002
Flag of Mexico October 11, 2002
Flag of the United Kingdom January 10, 2003
Flag of Italy 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

[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

[edit] References

  1. ^ FBI Famous Cases: The Weinberger Kidnapping

[edit] External links

City by the Sea at the Internet Movie Database