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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
James Foley (USA, 1953) debuted with
Reckless (1984), a realistic melodrama about a naive teenager in
a boring steel-mill town who gets experienced while hanging out with a motorcycle rebel.
But, mostly, it is a visual feast that seems meant to undermine the plot itself.
At Close Range (1986), inspired by a real story and scripted by
Nicholas Kazan, is a crime melodrama that is even more stylized
than the debut. The family drama works well until the moment when it becomes implausible: the kid survives a shooting at close range. And then it turns into
an unlikely revenge drama.
Brad (Sean Penn) is a troubled kid. He risks his life to get a few dollars that
a middle-aged man owes him. This impresses not only his brother but also a
cute girl, Terri. She seems further impressed when he gives her a pill of
ecstasy. His father is separated from his mother, although he brings money.
His mother lives with another man, who has a job, and does not like Brad's
carefree lifestyle, drugs and smoking. Expelled from the household, Brad
takes shelter at his father's place. At night his father and his brothers
go out to "work", which really means to carry out robberies. Then during the
day the father takes the kid for a trip to do some "laundry", but he really
means "laundering" the stolen banknotes by buying and selling cars.
Brad tracks down Terri, who lives in a farm, and kisses her.
Brad and his brother Tommy (whom some suspect of being a bastard son)
want to impress their father and go out at night
stealing tractors from the farms. But eventually one farmer catches them
and starts shooting at them. Wounded in the face, Brad calls his dad for help,
but doesn't get any. He can't go home bleeding, so he calls Terri and she
does help him. THey make love and spend a romantic day together,
swimming, making love and smoking pot.
One night he witnesses his father's gang kill an old man, and he changes
his mind about him. He chooses the farm girl over the gangster. His dream is
to make enough money to marry Terri and move somewhere else. Brad tries
to organize a robbery by himself, but fails. Arrested, he ends in jail.
Terri makes the mistake of asking his father for a ride to visit Brad in jail.
Convinced that she is being a "bad" influence on the kid (alienating the kid
from him), Brad's father gets her drunk, tells her to leave his son alone
and then, to make sure she gets the message, rapes her. Terri tells Brad,
who has been refusing to cooperate with the authorities. Brad cooperates with
the authorities and tells all he knows about his father's criminal activities.
His father does not hesitate to kill, one by one, his son's friends
and bury them in the hills. including Tommy, his own son, anybody who could
be a witness.
Brad is released for having cooperated. That night Brad and Terri prepare
to leave. They make it to the car. Then someone starts shooting. Terri
is massacred. Brad survives. Brad drags himself to his father's
place and confronts him, holding a gun in his hands. Bleeding almost to death,
Brad tells his father that he won't kill him because he doesn't want to become
like him. The police arrest the father and Brad will be the star witness at the trial.
After the
screwball comedy
for Madonna
Who's that Girl (1987)
written by Andrew Smith and Ken Finkleman, he moved into noir territory with
After Dark My Sweet (1990), an adaptation of
Jim Thompson's 1955 novel.
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
is a drama by David Mamet; a film of actors, who enjoy Mamet's exquisite dialogues; but those dialogues contain too many soliloquies, which slow down the pace of the action and do not add much to the psychological excavation.
A group of real estate agents, each with their own personal problems, are scolded by the inspector who came from headquarters, who promises to fire them all but the two best ones, and leaves the local boss in charge to give them "leads" (names of potential clients) and unleash them against each other.
Each one gets on the phone and, using the dirtiest tricks, tries to convince their "leads" to buy real estate.
Lemmon is desperate and tries to convince the boss to give him some extra leads, the good kind, not the usual ones that have been circulating for years and correspond to people who have no intention of buying. The boss almost agrees, but only on the condition that Lemmon pay him a bribe, and Lemmon does not have the money.
Another, Dave, hatches a plan to steal the leads that very night and forces a naive colleague to help him.
So the leads mysteriously disappear during the theft. Both Ricki (Pacino) and Lemmon meanwhile have finally closed a deal and are in the lead.
The agents argue, congratulate and confide in each other while in the next room the police and the boss conduct interrogations.
Both Pacino's and Lemmon's deals turn out to be illusions: Pacino's client has charged his wife, who now wants the money back, and Lemmon's clients are notorious fools.
The boss guesses that it must have been Lemmon who carried out the theft and threatens to expose him if he does not confess. Lemmon confesses: it was him, and he sold the leads to the competition.
Two Bits (1995)
Fear (1996) is a psycothriller about a maniac who is
obsessed with a teen girl.
mediocre The Chamber (1996)
The Corruptor (1999), written by Robert Pucci, is a silly adaptation
of the Hong Kong "triad" genre to the underworld of New York.
Confidence (2003) is another noir.
Perfect Stranger (2007)
Fifty Shades Darker (2017) and
Fifty Shades Freed (2018) are erotic movies.
Foley died in 2025.
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