The Narrows is a great example of how NOT to adapt a novel to the screen. That's because there are a lot of nice elements to this film, but just too blessed many of them. At only 106 minutes long, this movie has at least 10 separate story lines running through it and tries to give each of them roughly equal attention. And since at least 5 of those story lines don't really play a role in the central plot, that means The Narrows spends at least half its screen time on digressions that ultimately go nowhere. Which means the essential elements of this tale go starved for time and attention.
Mike Manadoro (Kevin Zegers) is a Brooklyn kid with a love of photography. He's won a partial scholarship to college and the chance to study with a great photography professor (Roger Rees). But Mike's job at the mobbed-up car service run by Big Lou (Tony Cucci) doesn't pay enough to cover the rest of the cost of school. So when Lou's brother Tony (Titus Welliver), the neighborhood wiseguy, offers Mike a pick up and delivery job that pays $2,000 a week, Mike takes it.
That greatly displeases Mike's father Vinny (Vincent D'Onofrio), a small time bookie who's on disability from his job in sanitation. Vinny's spent most of his life standing on the edges of Tony and Lou's criminal underworld, always holding himself apart. He's an unyielding man whose entire world and self is the neighborhood he's lived in his whole life. Vinny is also disappointed in his son when he compares him to Mike's childhood friend Nicky Shades (Eddie Cahill). Nicky was the hero of the neighborhood growing up until he went away to fight in Afghanistan. Now he's back and fallen so far he needs Mike to vouch for him just to get a job with Lou.
At college, Mike meets and falls in love with Kathy (Sophia Bush), a rich girl from Manhattan who's both attracted and scared by Mike's working class character and dangerous lifestyle. While he's pursuing and bedding Kathy, Mike isn't at all bothered by the fact that he already has a girlfriend from the neighborhood (Monica Keena) who desperately wants to marry him.
As if all that wasn't enough, there's also a subplot involving one of Mike's co-workers sleeping with a slutty married woman, the destruction of Mike's hero worship of Nicky Shades, Tony having to deal with Albanians encroaching on his territory, Mike's struggles with college and, I believe, a partridge in a pear tree.
That is a whole lot of stuff to cram into a 106 minute long film and despite some very admirable efforts, director Francois Velle can't pull it off. The movie just spends too much time on things that ultimately don't matter.
Let met give you an example. At the beginning of the story, Mike's photography is held up as the thing that might get him out of his dead end Brooklyn world. Velle emphasizes that by constantly utilizing photographs and photographic imagery throughout the movie. At the end of the story, however, Mike's photography has become irrelevant. Kathy is the vehicle through which Mike will or won't escape Brooklyn. But when the crucial moment comes for Mike and Kathy, it doesn't mean everything it should because they haven't had enough meaningful time together on screen due to all the other things going on. All the time that was spent on photography, for example, ended up meaning nothing and that was time that could have gone into deepening and complicating Mike and Kathy's relationship so there would be more of an investment when their big moment comes.
As I mentioned, The Narrows is adapted from a book and these filmmakers needed to be much more ruthless is leaving things from the book out of the film. There are the ingredients of something very nice here. Vincent D'Onofrio gives a sterling performance as Vinny, even though the character does get knocked around by the Almighty Plot Hammer a bit. Titus Welliver and Eddie Cahill are also very good, but they have relatively little screen time and can never build up any momentum. Kevin Zegers is a bit bland but perfectly agreeable and the breathy, beautiful Sophia Bush gives just enough grounding to the perfect fantasy that is Kathy. In fact, all of the cast do worthwhile work in their roles. There's simply too many of them doing too many things that don't contribute to the whole of the movie.
This certainly isn't a bad film and it's largely enjoyable, but it ends in an anti-climatic emotional and thematic spiral that left me unsatisfied. Your mileage may vary, but no matter how much you may like it, I am pretty sure you'll come away thinking The Narrows could have been even better.
Mike Manadoro (Kevin Zegers) is a Brooklyn kid with a love of photography. He's won a partial scholarship to college and the chance to study with a great photography professor (Roger Rees). But Mike's job at the mobbed-up car service run by Big Lou (Tony Cucci) doesn't pay enough to cover the rest of the cost of school. So when Lou's brother Tony (Titus Welliver), the neighborhood wiseguy, offers Mike a pick up and delivery job that pays $2,000 a week, Mike takes it.
That greatly displeases Mike's father Vinny (Vincent D'Onofrio), a small time bookie who's on disability from his job in sanitation. Vinny's spent most of his life standing on the edges of Tony and Lou's criminal underworld, always holding himself apart. He's an unyielding man whose entire world and self is the neighborhood he's lived in his whole life. Vinny is also disappointed in his son when he compares him to Mike's childhood friend Nicky Shades (Eddie Cahill). Nicky was the hero of the neighborhood growing up until he went away to fight in Afghanistan. Now he's back and fallen so far he needs Mike to vouch for him just to get a job with Lou.
At college, Mike meets and falls in love with Kathy (Sophia Bush), a rich girl from Manhattan who's both attracted and scared by Mike's working class character and dangerous lifestyle. While he's pursuing and bedding Kathy, Mike isn't at all bothered by the fact that he already has a girlfriend from the neighborhood (Monica Keena) who desperately wants to marry him.
As if all that wasn't enough, there's also a subplot involving one of Mike's co-workers sleeping with a slutty married woman, the destruction of Mike's hero worship of Nicky Shades, Tony having to deal with Albanians encroaching on his territory, Mike's struggles with college and, I believe, a partridge in a pear tree.
That is a whole lot of stuff to cram into a 106 minute long film and despite some very admirable efforts, director Francois Velle can't pull it off. The movie just spends too much time on things that ultimately don't matter.
Let met give you an example. At the beginning of the story, Mike's photography is held up as the thing that might get him out of his dead end Brooklyn world. Velle emphasizes that by constantly utilizing photographs and photographic imagery throughout the movie. At the end of the story, however, Mike's photography has become irrelevant. Kathy is the vehicle through which Mike will or won't escape Brooklyn. But when the crucial moment comes for Mike and Kathy, it doesn't mean everything it should because they haven't had enough meaningful time together on screen due to all the other things going on. All the time that was spent on photography, for example, ended up meaning nothing and that was time that could have gone into deepening and complicating Mike and Kathy's relationship so there would be more of an investment when their big moment comes.
As I mentioned, The Narrows is adapted from a book and these filmmakers needed to be much more ruthless is leaving things from the book out of the film. There are the ingredients of something very nice here. Vincent D'Onofrio gives a sterling performance as Vinny, even though the character does get knocked around by the Almighty Plot Hammer a bit. Titus Welliver and Eddie Cahill are also very good, but they have relatively little screen time and can never build up any momentum. Kevin Zegers is a bit bland but perfectly agreeable and the breathy, beautiful Sophia Bush gives just enough grounding to the perfect fantasy that is Kathy. In fact, all of the cast do worthwhile work in their roles. There's simply too many of them doing too many things that don't contribute to the whole of the movie.
This certainly isn't a bad film and it's largely enjoyable, but it ends in an anti-climatic emotional and thematic spiral that left me unsatisfied. Your mileage may vary, but no matter how much you may like it, I am pretty sure you'll come away thinking The Narrows could have been even better.