It's a brave thing to enter Corleone-land after "The Godfather", "GoodFellas" and "The Sopranos". But it's pretty dumb to act as if none of these cornerstones of movie- and yes: human history ever existed. And while it was great to see director James Gray diving into the almost unknown russian-american crime scene in the fascinating "Little Odessa" (1994), it is boring and most of the time plain unbelievable to witness ex-con Leo (Mark Wahlberg) trusting a sleazy and over-the-top Joaquin Phoenix - murder, mistrust and treason are the uninspired consequences, when the cops as well as the mob are trying to hunt Leo down, because Little-League-mob boss Frank (James Caan) wants to get to Leo before the police does. Too bad the only thing that comes to mind is: If Leo had only once been to the movies in his life, he would have known he was talking to Sonny Corleone - and had run away as soon as he could.
Review of The Yards
