Review of Federal Hill (1995) by Lee M — 20 Oct 2008

I suppose I had to watch this movie at some point since it takes place in my neighborhood. Goddamn was this town a shithole in the 90's! Downtown was just a pile of dirt and like three buildings with graffiti on them. Apparently there weren't any Spanish or black people here back then. Not one in the entire movie! 100% of the citizens in the neighborhood were Italian. The only fun I had viewing this film was recognizing all the different settings. You had Haven Brothers, the steps near there, downtown, the Biltmore, Angelo's, the bakery down the street, the funeral home on Broadway, America street, The Valet stand on Atwells, Thayer Street (with no Au Bon Pain or Starbucks! maybe the 90's weren't so bad on the East Side anyway.) and Brown University.

.The plot was full of cliche's. Ooooh you have the working class kid who falls for for the Ivy League coke whore who's going to eventually leave him to go on some archeology dig somewhere.

And then you need to find a way to make a large and unrealistic amount of money in a week or the mob is going to kill you! Wow, that is such an original plot!

I also think they tried too hard to give the viewer the impression that maybe Nicholas Turturro's character was a closet homosexual who had a thing for his friend (was that the guy from Beer League?).

Turturro did a pretty good job though. The final scene had some emotion in it.

But overall, badda bing badda boom this movie sucked ass!