Review of Bullets Over Broadway (1994) by Paul Z — 21 Jul 2008

Woody Allen is such an acute and masterly dramatist that he tells a story of a playwright whose play is self-consciously artsy and too hollowly dramatic. This is a terribly challenging concept to flesh out, yet he does successfully. He proceeds to tell one of his most entertaining and deeply dramatic stories to date, fielding questions artists of any kind themselves rarely dare to explore the answers to. He leaves us realizing that a man is not made an artist but born one, and the one with the pen may not be the one whose born and in fact anyone from any profession may be. The subtle hints discerning the two in the relationship between John Cusack, whose performance is wonderful, and Chazz Palminteri, who ingeniusly and perceptively plays the character some may not think to found in a Woody Allen film.

Bullets Over Broadway happens to be shot in a style that is truly my favorite. Perfectly atmospheric period settings aside, it is reminiscent of the first two Godfather films, a bleak but clean wood brown dominating many scenes as well as lots of black and red. The camera never draws attention to itself and instead does what many of the truly most brilliant visual stylists of the cinema want it to do, which is to tell the story as opposed to flaunting voyeuristic class.

Most of the film's humor does not come from Allen's signature quips and broadly comical farce situations, with the exception of Jim Broadbent's eerily funny actor whose eating disorder is always a worry, but from the hilarious bombast of Jennifer Tilly's gangster moll. She is lazy, selfish, completely unaware, and more than a handful for everybody. This is the best performance I've seen from her, and like all aspects of this film, there is a careful moderation to its temperament. Dianne Wiest wonderfully plays the classy, seductive master actress that Tilly thinks she is, yet with real superstar drawbacks such as several failed marriages and a drinking problem.

The reason the film works so well and for me sets a standard for cinematography and atmosphere is because of how masterfully Woody Allen tempers the look, cast, violence, and thematic elements of it. Bullets Over Broadway has nary a single flaw and is definitely one of Allen's absolute best.