The Yards
USA 2000
Reviewed by Geoffrey Macnab
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Leo Handler arrives back in New York after four years in prison. He takes a job with his Uncle Frank who runs a local subway company. His old friend Willie Gutierrez takes him under his wing. Leo joins Willie and his gang on an expedition to vandalise train stock belonging to a rival company. Willie has an argument with a night-watchman who will no longer take his bribes. When the night-watchman lets off the alarm, Willie stabs him dead. A police officer turns up and catches Leo; Leo bludgeons the officer unconscious and escapes.
Willie infers to Frank that Leo killed the night-watchman. He tries to persuade Leo to murder the police officer, who is in hospital in a coma. Instead, Leo goes into hiding. His sickly mother is devastated to learn he is in trouble again. Willie's girlfriend Erica, who is Frank's stepdaughter, begins to suspect that Leo is being stitched up. Frank arranges to meet and help Leo. At the rendezvous, Leo realises Frank has a gun and flees.
Leo and Willie have a fight. Willie's relationship with Erica (who was Leo's childhood sweetheart) rapidly deteriorates. They have a bitter row; pushed over a banister by Willie, Erica falls to her death. Leo gets in touch with a rival train company and tells them what he knows about Frank's business methods. He agrees to give himself up to the police. At a special hearing, he blows the whistle on Frank and his cronies.
Review
Self-consciously elegiac, The Yards is a slow-burning but meticulously crafted family melodrama posing as a thriller. Writer-director James Gray (making his second feature after 1994's Little Odessa) sets his story in Queens, New York, but neither the location nor the plot - which touches on political corruption and industrial sabotage - is the mainspring here. Gray is far more preoccupied with the relationships between the various family members at the heart of his film than with his ostensible subject matter - the battle to control New York's subway.
The opening shot, a close-up of an earnest-looking Leo, played by Mark Wahlberg, aboard a train taking him home after four years in prison, sets the tone: he is the outsider being drawn back into a community whose rules he doesn't fully understand. As if to emphasise his uncertainty, Gray keeps the look of the film dark: there are several power cuts, everyone seems to dress in muted colours, even Howard Shore's majestic, sombre score adds to the prevailing mood of solemnity. While it is apparent from the outset that Leo is a good lad at heart - he dotes on his ailing mother - it is also obvious that his wicked uncle and his best friend Willie, Cain to his Abel, will lead him astray. We can guess that the uncle is a scheming Machiavellian by the oblique way Gray frames him - he's often seen through half-open doors or at the end of corridors, schmoozing and cajoling. It's also hard to trust Willie: barely has Leo got out of prison than he sees him start fights in nightclubs and pay bribes to a stream of men in suits.
Gray's debt to The Godfather (1977) is obvious both in the casting of James Caan, who plays Leo's scheming uncle, and in his intense focus on family relations. At various points - as he creeps through the hospital or moves his sickly mother out of his apartment to escape killers - Leo even seems like a latter-day version of Al Pacino's equally conscientious, equally torn Michael Corleone. But whereas Coppola's film was set in the world of organised crime, The Yards, rather more prosaically, is about rival New York subway companies. In this regard, Gray's epic ambitions feel a little strained: it's hard to see crooked contractors and embezzling local-government officers as the tragic figures Gray intends. Nor does the denouement - in which Leo testifies against his own to a McCarthy-style hearing - carry the impact that might have been expected.
Where the film does register is as a study of a family torn apart by betrayal and bad faith. With few shoot-outs or kinetic action scenes, The Yards relies on the subtlety and intensity of the performances, most of which are excellent. Wahlberg is both feisty and vulnerable as the baffled ex-con; the saturnine-looking Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Willie, has a rare knack of making villainous characters seem sympathetic; Caan excels as the unscrupulous, thick-skinned fixer who pretends to be a dedicated family man but is willing to sacrifice a close relative for the sake of his business. If Gray risks going down a blind tunnel by paying so much attention to subway politics, he gets away with it through sheer dint of craftsmanship. Ultimately, The Yards is well enough acted and scripted to bear comparison with the character-driven films of the 70s it strives to emulate.
Credits
- Director
- James Gray
- Producers
- Nick Wechsler
- Paul Webster
- Kerry Orent
- Screenplay
- James Gray
- Matt Reeves
- Director of Photography
- Harris Savides
- Editor
- Jeffrey Ford
- Production Designer
- Kevin Thompson
- Music/Music Conductor/
Orchestrations - Howard Shore
- © Miramax Film Corp
- Production Companies
- Miramax Films presents a Paul Webster/Industry Entertainment production
- Executive Producers
- Bob Weinstein
- Harvey Weinstein
- Jonathan Gordon
- Co-producers
- Matt Reeves
- Christopher Goode
- Production Associate
- Roger Davies
- Production Co-ordinator
- Alyson Evans
- Unit Production Manager
- Victoria McGarry Lorino
- Location Manager
- Lys Hopper
- Location Co-ordinator
- Jonathan Silver
- Post-production Supervisor
- Isabel Henderson
- Assistant Directors
- David Wechsler
- Linda Perkins
- Chip Signore
- Additional Photography Unit:
- Sam Hill
- Script Supervisor
- Julie Oppenheimer
- Casting
- Director:
- Douglas Aibel
- Associate:
- Jordan Beswick
- ADR Voice:
- Leigh French
- Camera Operator
- Bruce MacCallum
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- John Ottesen
- Art Director
- Judy Rhee
- Set Decorator
- Ford Wheeler
- Costume Designer
- Michael Clancy
- Wardrobe Supervisors
- Marcia Patten
- Winsome McKoy
- Make-up
- Key Artists:
- Donald Mowat
- Leslie Fuller
- Artist:
- Rita Ogden
- Hair
- Key Stylist:
- Wayne Herndon
- Stylists:
- James Post
- Charles McKenna
- Key Stylist, Additional Photography Unit:
- Mary D'Angelo
- Titles/Opticals
- Howard Anderson Company
- Music Performed by
- The London Philharmonic Orchestra
- Music Supervisor
- Dana Sano
- Technical Supervisor
- Robert Cotnoir
- Music Co-ordinator
- Bob Bowen
- Music Editors
- Annette Kudrak
- Temp:
- Scott Stambler
- Recording Engineer
- Simon Rhodes
- Auricle Operator
- Chris Cozens
- Music Consultant
- Chris Spelman
- Soundtrack
- "Boo-Go-Loo" - Les McCann; "I Can't Wait to Meetchu" - Macy Gray; "I'm Beginning to See the Light" - Peggy Lee; "R.E.A.L.I.T.Y." - KRS-One; "No One Is to Blame" - Howard Jones; "Saturn: The Bringer of Old" - Howard Shore; "Welcome to Tokyo, Otis Clay" - Clinton; "Samba de Janeiro"; "Affirmation" - George Benson; "Happy Shoppers" - D. Walter; "Somos el futuro"
- Sound Design
- Gary Rydstrom
- Kyrsten Mate Comoglio
- Production Sound Mixer
- Tom Paul
- Re-recording Mixers
- Tom Johnson
- Lora Hirschberg
- Re-recordists
- Steve Romanko
- Gabriel Guy
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Phil Benson
- Dialogue Editors
- Claire Graybill
- Dianna Stirpe
- Sound Effects Editor
- Stephen Kearney
- ADR
- Recordist:
- Don Murray
- Mixer:
- Kris Campbell
- Supervising Editor:
- Stephen Kearney
- Editor:
- Gwendolyn Yates Whittle
- Foley
- Walkers:
- Jana Vance
- Denny Thorpe
- Editor:
- Jonathan Null
- Creative Associate
- Christopher Spelman
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Jery Hewitt
- Cast
- Ellen Burstyn
- Val Handler
- Faye Dunaway
- Kitty Olchin
- Joaquin Phoenix
- Willie Gutierrez
- Charlize Theron
- Erica Stoltz
- Mark Wahlberg
- Leo Handler
- James Caan
- Frank Olchin
- Victor Argo
- Paul Lazarides
- Victor Arnold
- Albert Granada
- Steve Lawrence
- Arthur Mydanick
- Tomas Milian
- Manuel Sequiera
- Tony Musante
- Seymour Korman
- Robert Montano
- Hector Gallardo
- Joseph Ragno
- parole office
- Chad Aaron
- Bernard Stoltz
- Andrew Davoli
- Raymond Price
- Louis Guss
- Nathan Grodner
- Domenick Lombardozzi
- Todd
- Joe Lisi
- Elliot
- David Zayas
- Officer Jerry Rifkin
- Teresa Yenque
- maid
- José Soto
- orderly
- John Tormey
- contract officer
- Teddy Coluca
- Terry
- Jack O'Connell
- Sal Disipio
- Dan Grimaldi
- executive 1
- Garry Pastore
- Detective Tommasino
- Ron Brice
- Detective Boulett
- Gene Canfield
- Queensborough policeman
- Keith Hernandez
- baseball celebrity
- Allan Houston
- basketball celebrity
- Andi Shrem
- Belva
- Joe Dimare
- Dante
- Barry Wetcher
- young doctor
- Oscar Colon
- well-dressed man
- Jace Kent
- young Italian man
- Brandon Danziger
- Neil
- Doug Barron
- doctor
- Floyd Resnick
- hospital cop
- Chris Edwards
- Raymond Seiden
- police officers
- Annika Pergament
- reporter
- Maxmiliano Hernandez
- bartender
- Kip Evans
- guy
- John Elsen
- Douglas Crosby
- officers
- Scott Nicholson
- policeman 1
- Kim Merritt
- Todd's girlfriend
- Erin Walls
- Dante's girlfriend
- Tyree Simpson
- doorman
- Peter Vallone
- councilman
- Irwin Gray
- lawyer
- Denise Traficanti
- secretary
- Roma Torre
- Louis Dodley
- Ernie Anastos
- news anchors
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Film Four Distributors
- 10,027 feet
- 115 minutes 41 seconds
- DolbyDigital/DTS/SDDS
- Colour by
- Deluxe
- 2.35:1 [Super 35]