The biggest gripe I have with City of Industry is not because of its familiarity but for its execution. I love the genre of noir, pulpy crime and a couple of heist films but City of Industry is just a bank job too far; a wise talking gangster too far and a story of pulp fiction too far. City of Industry takes place in a world in which car alarms do not exist; in which if someone kicks open your apartment door and you're asleep, you do not wake up; a world in which people can survive multiple gun shot wounds without professional medical help and a world in which jewellery robbers don't wear masks. Throw in some badly done gunfights and a weak romance sub-plot and you have a sort of fun at times gritty crime film but something forgettable in the long run.
The biggest problem I had with City of Industry is its point of view approach. It sounds like a funny thing to be pulling up a film for but just who exactly is the protagonist here? Who are we supposed to be following? Who's telling this story? It seems the film wants us to focus on several different characters at once but only one of them is in the film long enough for us to care for them while the others fill in the blanks when Roy Egan (Keitel) isn't on screen. At the beginning, Rachel (Janssen) and Jorge (Dominguez) talk on the phone he is due to go to prison for a few years and Rachel, his wife, is upset about this as you'd expect only twenty minutes later the film's initial incident has happened and Jorge is out of the picture. Before you say something, this is not a spoiler because the film's premise is: a guy hunts for a betrayer after they kill his two heist partners. That gives away enough right there so why does the film have its initial character build up revolve around someone it'll kill off ten minutes later?
Secondly, it seems that Egan is the character from whose point of view we're seeing this. The scene that suggests this is when he's standing at the trailer door when Skip (well played by Stephen Dorff) arrives because the camera cuts to his point of view; the point of view angle is very important as it puts the audience in the character's head, so the film has changed its mind again. The closing monologue all about how it was 'our' struggle and no one will ever know 'our' story is told to us by a character who has just spent all of about nine minutes on screen. Sorry, but it's not 'your' story because you didn't even do anything bar stay at home and look after the kids at this point the protagonist (or who we think is the protagonist) has disappeared.
So the film is muddled in who is delivering the film, whose story is it anyway? Think of any other film that uses voice over work and chances are when they show other characters doing things a million miles away from them, the film will never 'shift' to their point of view. And so the film's initial incident kicks Egan into action as he punches and shoots his way through the city looking for Skip, an amateur amongst professionals with his mistreating of women and his hip, fancy music. There is some fun to be had out of this little journey because the film is feeding its narrative drive (that is, revenge) with the obligatory yet entertaining scenes you expect. Egan floors a jerk of a bartender, he spends some time with the widow that is Rachel and he gets around stealing cars and interrogating people good fun, you think.
But then the film steers itself off the thin track it was already on. Revenge is still in the back of the film's mind but it is not the drive anymore. There is a sub-plot that opens up involving money, owed money, stolen money; I'm not sure. All I know is that Skip gets into trouble with some African-American gangsters and hell threatens to break loose; I say 'threaten' because nothing much actually happens. If we take 1999's Payback, we can see that Porter goes after Val for the money he owes him: Porter narrates and we do not get distracted by anything else until the dénouement between Val and Porter; also, whenever Val is on screen it is a constant build up of how angry Porter is and how vulnerable Val is; in City of Industry, Skip continues to act deranged and immaturely, alienating us from the film's crime world and the revenge narrative-drive is sort of substituted for a little more violence and some characters running around for some missing money.
It's at this point, around about the forty-five minute mark that the film looses us; it has abandoned its approach and has opted for explosions, impossible feats and mere petty violence. Nice opening, nice little hunt for Egan until a certain point and then 'bam', we aren't having fun anymore. Then the film gives us a satisfying dénouement before cheating us again and having Egan disappear. Rachel is left to tell us how hard it was for her to get everything sorted out, but that's just silly since she didn't do anything. Maybe a better film have been eliminating Regan in the trailer park and then having Rachel go on the revenge mission what fun that might've been.
The biggest problem I had with City of Industry is its point of view approach. It sounds like a funny thing to be pulling up a film for but just who exactly is the protagonist here? Who are we supposed to be following? Who's telling this story? It seems the film wants us to focus on several different characters at once but only one of them is in the film long enough for us to care for them while the others fill in the blanks when Roy Egan (Keitel) isn't on screen. At the beginning, Rachel (Janssen) and Jorge (Dominguez) talk on the phone he is due to go to prison for a few years and Rachel, his wife, is upset about this as you'd expect only twenty minutes later the film's initial incident has happened and Jorge is out of the picture. Before you say something, this is not a spoiler because the film's premise is: a guy hunts for a betrayer after they kill his two heist partners. That gives away enough right there so why does the film have its initial character build up revolve around someone it'll kill off ten minutes later?
Secondly, it seems that Egan is the character from whose point of view we're seeing this. The scene that suggests this is when he's standing at the trailer door when Skip (well played by Stephen Dorff) arrives because the camera cuts to his point of view; the point of view angle is very important as it puts the audience in the character's head, so the film has changed its mind again. The closing monologue all about how it was 'our' struggle and no one will ever know 'our' story is told to us by a character who has just spent all of about nine minutes on screen. Sorry, but it's not 'your' story because you didn't even do anything bar stay at home and look after the kids at this point the protagonist (or who we think is the protagonist) has disappeared.
So the film is muddled in who is delivering the film, whose story is it anyway? Think of any other film that uses voice over work and chances are when they show other characters doing things a million miles away from them, the film will never 'shift' to their point of view. And so the film's initial incident kicks Egan into action as he punches and shoots his way through the city looking for Skip, an amateur amongst professionals with his mistreating of women and his hip, fancy music. There is some fun to be had out of this little journey because the film is feeding its narrative drive (that is, revenge) with the obligatory yet entertaining scenes you expect. Egan floors a jerk of a bartender, he spends some time with the widow that is Rachel and he gets around stealing cars and interrogating people good fun, you think.
But then the film steers itself off the thin track it was already on. Revenge is still in the back of the film's mind but it is not the drive anymore. There is a sub-plot that opens up involving money, owed money, stolen money; I'm not sure. All I know is that Skip gets into trouble with some African-American gangsters and hell threatens to break loose; I say 'threaten' because nothing much actually happens. If we take 1999's Payback, we can see that Porter goes after Val for the money he owes him: Porter narrates and we do not get distracted by anything else until the dénouement between Val and Porter; also, whenever Val is on screen it is a constant build up of how angry Porter is and how vulnerable Val is; in City of Industry, Skip continues to act deranged and immaturely, alienating us from the film's crime world and the revenge narrative-drive is sort of substituted for a little more violence and some characters running around for some missing money.
It's at this point, around about the forty-five minute mark that the film looses us; it has abandoned its approach and has opted for explosions, impossible feats and mere petty violence. Nice opening, nice little hunt for Egan until a certain point and then 'bam', we aren't having fun anymore. Then the film gives us a satisfying dénouement before cheating us again and having Egan disappear. Rachel is left to tell us how hard it was for her to get everything sorted out, but that's just silly since she didn't do anything. Maybe a better film have been eliminating Regan in the trailer park and then having Rachel go on the revenge mission what fun that might've been.