Ed Nicoletti had himself listed as writer, director and producer in both the opening and closing credits of The Exchange, indicating that he was really proud of this film and wanted everyone to know he made it. I have no idea why he felt that way. Claiming responsibility for this slipshod, amateurish disaster is like claiming responsibility for that oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Nicoletti unleashed a foul, toxic discharge into the world of cinema that leaves a black coating of disgust and shame over anyone unfortunate enough to rent this DVD.
This wretched tale concerns the criminal Naldoff brothers. There's Michael (Robert Stephenson), the handsome leader who looks like a less ethnic version of Ken Whal. David (Anthony Mangano) is half cop, half crook and all meathead. Lee (Robert Wahlberg) is a screw up who looks like he came from an entirely different gene pool. Matty (Same Levassar) is the kid brother and the least homophobic Italian-American in the history of the world. There are actual gay guidos who think Matty is too open minded. These four embark on a series of illicit schemes that eventually lead to their downfall in what writer/director/producer/village idiot Nicoletti must have though was a very clever plot. He was wrong. I've read candy wrappers that were better written than this movie.
The Naldoff brothers are the sort of Sesame Street mobsters who won't kill people or get involved in drug deals. Their main criminal enterprises in this story are scamming an Indian casino and intimidating nursing home directors into signing exclusive contracts with only one funeral home. These guys are all Fredo Corleone but think they're either Michael or Sonny, which has a lot of comedic potential. Unfortunately, writer/director/producer/rodeo clown Nicoletti also thinks he's making a serious movie about serious characters. The result is like watching an unfunny sitcom from the 1980s with the laugh track removed.
The Exchange is a string of badly written, badly acted, badly directed scenes that don't connect together. A scene ends, the screen fades to black, another scene begins. It does that over and over and over again. This film fades to black more often than a narcoleptic binge drinker. I don't know what crappy book on film-making writer/director/producer/borderline illiterate Nicoletti read before making this movie, but the chapter on how to transition from scene to scene must have been only three words long. Fade. To. Black.
The instances of violence in The Exchange are staged with all the skill and explicitness of a middle school play. I can't recall there being any profanity in the movie, which would certainly be unusual for a gangster flick made in 2000, though the dialog was so dreadful that I may simply be blocking the memory of it like it was childhood sexual abuse. There is one naked boob that shows up toward the end of this muddle for a few seconds.
I cannot be all that negative towards the cast of The Exchange. There are a few people in here who shouldn't have ever pursued acting as a profession, but by and large, they seem to be fairly inexperienced performers who were either really desperate for work or had colossally bad taste in scripts.
Watching this film left me with one depressing thought. Thanks to technological advances, making a movie has become so cheap and easy that anyone with even a modicum of ambition can do it. There are legions of writer/director/producer/proctologists like Ed Nicoletti out there, churning out more and more barren dross every year. If this sewage keeps on flowing, what is the marketplace going to be like decades from now? How will any viewer be able to find quality, low-budget cinema when for every good one, there's 50 or 60 stinkers out there? Even if they can eventually beam movies directly into your brain, you'll still have to first select a film from a list that will have hundreds or thousands of pieces of garbage like The Exchange on it. How many times will anyone go through that and get something that sucks before they completely give up on low-budget movies they've never heard of? I'm not sure the democratizing of cinema will end up being such a good thing in the end.
This wretched tale concerns the criminal Naldoff brothers. There's Michael (Robert Stephenson), the handsome leader who looks like a less ethnic version of Ken Whal. David (Anthony Mangano) is half cop, half crook and all meathead. Lee (Robert Wahlberg) is a screw up who looks like he came from an entirely different gene pool. Matty (Same Levassar) is the kid brother and the least homophobic Italian-American in the history of the world. There are actual gay guidos who think Matty is too open minded. These four embark on a series of illicit schemes that eventually lead to their downfall in what writer/director/producer/village idiot Nicoletti must have though was a very clever plot. He was wrong. I've read candy wrappers that were better written than this movie.
The Naldoff brothers are the sort of Sesame Street mobsters who won't kill people or get involved in drug deals. Their main criminal enterprises in this story are scamming an Indian casino and intimidating nursing home directors into signing exclusive contracts with only one funeral home. These guys are all Fredo Corleone but think they're either Michael or Sonny, which has a lot of comedic potential. Unfortunately, writer/director/producer/rodeo clown Nicoletti also thinks he's making a serious movie about serious characters. The result is like watching an unfunny sitcom from the 1980s with the laugh track removed.
The Exchange is a string of badly written, badly acted, badly directed scenes that don't connect together. A scene ends, the screen fades to black, another scene begins. It does that over and over and over again. This film fades to black more often than a narcoleptic binge drinker. I don't know what crappy book on film-making writer/director/producer/borderline illiterate Nicoletti read before making this movie, but the chapter on how to transition from scene to scene must have been only three words long. Fade. To. Black.
The instances of violence in The Exchange are staged with all the skill and explicitness of a middle school play. I can't recall there being any profanity in the movie, which would certainly be unusual for a gangster flick made in 2000, though the dialog was so dreadful that I may simply be blocking the memory of it like it was childhood sexual abuse. There is one naked boob that shows up toward the end of this muddle for a few seconds.
I cannot be all that negative towards the cast of The Exchange. There are a few people in here who shouldn't have ever pursued acting as a profession, but by and large, they seem to be fairly inexperienced performers who were either really desperate for work or had colossally bad taste in scripts.
Watching this film left me with one depressing thought. Thanks to technological advances, making a movie has become so cheap and easy that anyone with even a modicum of ambition can do it. There are legions of writer/director/producer/proctologists like Ed Nicoletti out there, churning out more and more barren dross every year. If this sewage keeps on flowing, what is the marketplace going to be like decades from now? How will any viewer be able to find quality, low-budget cinema when for every good one, there's 50 or 60 stinkers out there? Even if they can eventually beam movies directly into your brain, you'll still have to first select a film from a list that will have hundreds or thousands of pieces of garbage like The Exchange on it. How many times will anyone go through that and get something that sucks before they completely give up on low-budget movies they've never heard of? I'm not sure the democratizing of cinema will end up being such a good thing in the end.
