Factory workers on-strike in Brooklyn, 1952 have nothing to do at night but get into trouble: the head of the strike office is leading a double life (he's married with a child, but is attracted to the drag queens who gather in an apartment in the neighborhood), his dumb-lugs friends beat up on servicemen, a platinum-haired tramp sets up horny soldiers to be rolled, and uncouth family man Big Joe (who urinates out the window when he can't get into the bathroom at home) discovers his daughter isn't just fat--she's pregnant. Adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s book is proudly melodramatic and vibrantly lurid, but is really just a showcase for the actors. Director Uli Edel does a professional, polished job here (far more polished than his shoestring 1981 teen-addict expose "Christiane F."), although his jagged narrative eventually begins to feel half-empty. Everyone is so pig-headed and rude that we don't get a sense of anything actually happening, while the brutality--overwrought in many instances, though one may argue necessarily so--hinders Edel in bringing all the stories to a satisfactory finish. There's some redemption in the aftermath of the violence (and even some humor when dealing with Burt Young's pathetic Big Joe), but there's far more victims than victors...and a depressing feeling of waste and uncaring that makes the picture seem like an exercise in futility. ** from ****
Review of Last Exit to Brooklyn
