Imagine taking a 1970s sitcom about a couple of senior citizen petty criminals, splicing it together with a 1980s TV movie about the hazards of being a street corner hooker and sprinkling in bits of a 1990s indy flick about the dysfunctional dwellers of a squalid hotel lobby that tries to get all heartfelt and meaningful at the end. If you can imagine that, what you come up with is almost certainly better than Night at the Golden Eagle.
This isn't by any means the worst movie I've ever seen, but this type of bad movie is probably the worst kind of film to sit through. It's not really stupid or pretentious or incompetent enough for you to have fun with how much it sucks. It's merely so ill conceived that nothing about it works.
There are three separate elements to this story. One focuses on Tommy (Donnie Montemarano) and Mick (Vinny Argiro). They grew up together as street thugs who were never good enough to be real gangsters. Instead, they became the sort of small time hoods who stick up ice cream trucks and that's all they've ever been, even though they're both on the wrong side of 60 as this movie opens. Tommy is just getting out after a 7 year stint in prison and Mick surprises him with a plan to move out to Las Vegas and, once and for all, go straight. That plan pretty much goes up in smoke when Tommy brings a prostitute back to Mick's room at the Golden Eagle hotel and kills her.
Another aspect of this film shows us 15 year old runaway Loriann (Nicole Jacobs) as she falls in with a disgusting pimp named Rodan (Vinny Jones) and his aging whore, Sally (Ann Magnuson). Rodan works on Loriann's neediness and insecurity before handing her over to let Sally show her the ropes. We see a maternal bond form between Sally and Loriann, until Loriann emotionally ages about 20 years in 15 seconds and becomes even harder and more broken than Sally. This part of the movie made me wonder two things.
1. Is the character of Rodan named after the artist or the flying Japanese movie monster?
2. Is Vinny Jones a wholesome family man in real life? If he is, the guy deserves an Academy Award because on screen he is absolutely convincing as the sleaziest, most soulless piece of human excrement you can imagine.
The final thread to this cinematic tapestry is the interactions between the desk clerk (Miles Dougal) and the denizens of the Golden Eagle hotel lobby. All of them are no more than a half-step up from the gutter and none of them are reaching for the stars. This is the stuff where we're supposed to be impressed with how gritty and realistic things are and at the ironic detachment that turns these people's mental and emotional wounds into sources of humor. Yet it spoils all its cynical aspirations by trying to wring a tear out of the audience by having the lovable, old black buy die.
Can you see how mushing all of that together becomes a problem? The comedy can never be that comedic, the drama can never that dramatic and the snarky can never be that snarkful because it's all sloshing together in a movie goulash.
Like a great many independent films, I don't think Night at the Golden Eagle was ever meant to entertain anyone. This is the sort of thing where the filmmaker hopes it gets shown at film festivals and people applaud because the folks there convince themselves that it must be art. Well, I don't know art but I know what I like and it ain't this movie.
This isn't by any means the worst movie I've ever seen, but this type of bad movie is probably the worst kind of film to sit through. It's not really stupid or pretentious or incompetent enough for you to have fun with how much it sucks. It's merely so ill conceived that nothing about it works.
There are three separate elements to this story. One focuses on Tommy (Donnie Montemarano) and Mick (Vinny Argiro). They grew up together as street thugs who were never good enough to be real gangsters. Instead, they became the sort of small time hoods who stick up ice cream trucks and that's all they've ever been, even though they're both on the wrong side of 60 as this movie opens. Tommy is just getting out after a 7 year stint in prison and Mick surprises him with a plan to move out to Las Vegas and, once and for all, go straight. That plan pretty much goes up in smoke when Tommy brings a prostitute back to Mick's room at the Golden Eagle hotel and kills her.
Another aspect of this film shows us 15 year old runaway Loriann (Nicole Jacobs) as she falls in with a disgusting pimp named Rodan (Vinny Jones) and his aging whore, Sally (Ann Magnuson). Rodan works on Loriann's neediness and insecurity before handing her over to let Sally show her the ropes. We see a maternal bond form between Sally and Loriann, until Loriann emotionally ages about 20 years in 15 seconds and becomes even harder and more broken than Sally. This part of the movie made me wonder two things.
1. Is the character of Rodan named after the artist or the flying Japanese movie monster?
2. Is Vinny Jones a wholesome family man in real life? If he is, the guy deserves an Academy Award because on screen he is absolutely convincing as the sleaziest, most soulless piece of human excrement you can imagine.
The final thread to this cinematic tapestry is the interactions between the desk clerk (Miles Dougal) and the denizens of the Golden Eagle hotel lobby. All of them are no more than a half-step up from the gutter and none of them are reaching for the stars. This is the stuff where we're supposed to be impressed with how gritty and realistic things are and at the ironic detachment that turns these people's mental and emotional wounds into sources of humor. Yet it spoils all its cynical aspirations by trying to wring a tear out of the audience by having the lovable, old black buy die.
Can you see how mushing all of that together becomes a problem? The comedy can never be that comedic, the drama can never that dramatic and the snarky can never be that snarkful because it's all sloshing together in a movie goulash.
Like a great many independent films, I don't think Night at the Golden Eagle was ever meant to entertain anyone. This is the sort of thing where the filmmaker hopes it gets shown at film festivals and people applaud because the folks there convince themselves that it must be art. Well, I don't know art but I know what I like and it ain't this movie.