Jay Anania’s Shadows & Lies evokes memories of many better gangster films, but at the same time it creates its own slow brooding atmosphere with strong performances from a small but talented cast capable of delivering intimate nuances. James Franco stars as a young man set adrift in life by a brush with death, leaving him to float through life reminiscing and picking pockets. It’s a film of understated characters given legs courtesy of its actors and references, but at the same time it leans too heavily on a few devices instead of surrendering control completely to the powerful quartet of players it assembled.
Missing a flight that would ultimately crash and incinerate everyone aboard, William Vincent (James Franco) acquires a forged passport and with it a new life which he fills with meals in restaurants, petty theft, and a newfound career of video editing from a small apartment in New York’s Chinatown. One day he attracts the attention of Victor (Martin Donovan) and his boss (Josh Lucas), who happens to be the head honcho of a criminal organization of an unspecified size and business. William signs on as his errand boy to the reluctant acceptance of envelopes filled with cash and one night of company with the boss’s favorite girl Ann (Julianne Nicholson). The disaffected William strikes a chord with Ann, and an odd intimacy blossoms much to his employer’s discomfort, leading to a decree that William and Ann never see one another again. William grows increasingly violent and is eventually banished from New York, only to return years later in an attempt to retrieve Ann and help her escape the boss’s grasp.
The music for the film cascades between tones and harsh percussions, almost gong-like, an obvious throwback to Japanese gangster films. With that in mind, the parallels between the Franco’s silent, mumbling take on William fits with the restrained personae typical of leads from classic Yakuza pictures. However, instead of being silent and self-reliant out of a sense of honor, William does so to retain that sense of death which has allowed him to sever ties to his past, a gap only bridged by memories spent with twins he used to watch over. Not until he meets Ann does he want to reconnect with another human or have any real desires and ambitions beyond aimless wandering. Once he meets Ann he begins responding to the world again, but with emotions he doesn’t know how to control. Franco puts this across well, but he’s not the film’s highlight.
Despite Franco’s leading status in Shadows & Lies, the best turn comes from Martin Donovan as the reticent Victor who plays as a mentor to William and a weary enforcer for his boss’s business which seems to have an emotional edge which sometimes warps his perspective, especially where Ann is concerned. Donovan plays the mediator between William, who proves ever impulsive, and his boss whose better judgment is clouded by his desire to have Ann to himself. Lucas continues to prove that when he’s given a loose outline of a character that he can fill in the blanks and bring a rounded performance to the screen that easily trumps his work in more rigidly structured films. He does well here, but it’s hard to overshadow Donovan who does so well. For being the driving force behind William’s increasingly reckless behavior, Ann’s time on screen is surprisingly limited, but Julianne Nicholson makes good use of every second.
Where Shadows & Lies stumbles is in William’s constant dreams of the twins and attempting to create some faint bridge of memory. Franco created a believably despondent William rather quickly, and the conversations he has with the twins feel forced as the child actors are neither good nor is the writing in the scenes in question up to par with the rest of the film. In a similar vein, the film relies on a voiceover device that tries too hard to make some profound statement about hidden meanings and reflections on William’s character. It would all have been better left unsaid. One last unfortunate aspect of the film is its use of nature footage, some of which, like the analogy of the hummingbird has a purpose, but the rest feels like an empty endeavor to add more metaphors where additional interactions between Franco, Nicholson, and Donovan would have improved the character depth in a way nature allegories can’t.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
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"Shadows & Lies" is on sale June 7, 2011 and is rated R. Crime, Drama. Written and directed by Jay Anania. Starring James Franco, Josh Lucas, Julianne Nicholson, Martin Donovan.
