A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Pope of Greenwich Village & Desperate Hours -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Robert Harris]

Stuart Rosenberg's The Pope of Greenwich Village is an interesting film, filled with terrific performances, and while the ethnic nature of the tale being told, and the area of NY, in which it takes place, all come to the fore, I believe Roger Ebert nailed the basis of this film in his original review, dated 1 Jan 1984.

"The Pope of Greenwich Village" bills itself as a drama and is structured like a crime thriller, but I categorize it as basically a Behavior Movie. The real subject of the movie is the behavior of the characters, and the story is essentially an excuse for showboat performances. This movie is an actor's dream, and the actors involved are Eric Roberts, fresh from his triumph in "Star 80," as Paulie; Mickey Rourke, the hero of  "Diner," as Charlie; Daryl Hannah, right after her hit in "Splash," as the aerobics instructor; and the usual supporting types like Tony Musante as the uncle, Burt Young --stuffing his face with pasta -- as the godfather, an Geraldine Page as the tough-talking mother of the dead cop."

For those concerned that Shout Factory may have squeezed two feature films onto BD-25, no need to fret.  Each film is well represented on its own BD-50.

The companion piece, Michael Cimino's Desperate Hours (1990), which is based upon the earlier (1955) film with Humphrey Bogart and Fredric March, which in turn is based upon a play.

What's interesting here, is seeing what Mr. Cimino has done with the not only the story, but his cast -- Mickey Rourke, Anthony Hopkins, Mimi Rogers and Lindsay Crouse.

If you're going to pick up this Mickey Rourke Double Feature, I'd suggest that at the same time, you also add a copy of the original film to your library, especially as it can be had for about six bucks on Amazon.

While I believe that Pope may be the better film, Desperate is an interesting watch to see where it came from and where it was taken.

The double feature is currently available for $24.

Both films appear to be derived from IPs, both may be older transfers, could use a bit of stabilization and a tiny bit of cleanup.  Pope generally looks superior to Desperate, which leans more toward video.

Image - 4 (Pope)

             3.5 (Desperate)

Audio - 5

Pass / Fail - Pass

Recommended

As a side note, anyone truly interested in film history or film criticism should spend some quality time reading, or re-reading, Mr. Ebert's work.  In my humble opinion, he understood film better than anyone.  His writings can be found at rogerebert.com.  It's a great place to visit and learn.

RAH 

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

I think I will take your advice and go back and watch the Bogart version (which I liked) before revisiting the Cimino take on Desperate Hours. I always recall the acting in Cimino's version grating on me in a very bad way despite the fact that it is a very talented cast. I also remember the opening to Cimino's film with the car racing through the beautiful mountain setting and thinking that Cimino always finds a way to get a gorgeous sequence like that in his films. I can't recall though why she is racing down out of the mountains at the start of the film...seems she is a long way away from getting to work at the city courthouse.