With this star-studded cast, it's hard to believe that this movie went straight to video. Or did it just fly through the theater so fast that I missed it? I'm not sure, but either way, it deserved better. This is a decent period piece crime drama, in the Bonnie and Clyde vein, by writer/director Todd Robinson, who has a couple Emmy winning documentaries, under his belt, so tackling a true story as a drama seems to make sense. The whole cast gives strong performances and the story is not bad, though it seems to plod along at times.
Lonely Hearts is a true story, set in the late 1940s. Jared Leto is Ray Fernandez, a slick conman pulling his marks from the lonely heart section of the newspaper, romancing them and then taking off with all of their cash. According to the film, his scumbag pattern only turns deadly after he meets Martha Beck (Salma Hayek), who begins to work with him, posing as his sister. Her jealousy, however, leads to her killing the women that Ray is romancing. Travolta's character, Elmer Robinson, becomes obsessed with busting Fernandez after one of his marks commits suicide, and he and his partner, Charles Hildebrandt (Gandolfini) are already on the robbing Romeo's tail when he hooks up with Beck.
This one reminded me of LA Confidential crossed with The Black Dahlia, though it was better than the latter and not as good as the former. I often don't enjoy period pieces like this, but I found this one fairly engaging. The cop characters are kind of bland, but the murderous couple was very interesting and I was never sure what would happen next between them. A decent renter for fans of the genre.
This work was first posted on realmoviereview.com
Lonely Hearts is a true story, set in the late 1940s. Jared Leto is Ray Fernandez, a slick conman pulling his marks from the lonely heart section of the newspaper, romancing them and then taking off with all of their cash. According to the film, his scumbag pattern only turns deadly after he meets Martha Beck (Salma Hayek), who begins to work with him, posing as his sister. Her jealousy, however, leads to her killing the women that Ray is romancing. Travolta's character, Elmer Robinson, becomes obsessed with busting Fernandez after one of his marks commits suicide, and he and his partner, Charles Hildebrandt (Gandolfini) are already on the robbing Romeo's tail when he hooks up with Beck.
This one reminded me of LA Confidential crossed with The Black Dahlia, though it was better than the latter and not as good as the former. I often don't enjoy period pieces like this, but I found this one fairly engaging. The cop characters are kind of bland, but the murderous couple was very interesting and I was never sure what would happen next between them. A decent renter for fans of the genre.
This work was first posted on realmoviereview.com