City by the Sea (2002)

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City by the Sea is something of a head scratcher. On the press circuit, it’s being touted as the true story of Vincent LaMarca, a decorated New York Police Department detective whose son commits a drug related murder. While this would be a tragedy for anyone, it’s a double whammy for LaMarca, since his father had been executed in the 1950s for the kidnap and murder of a small child. It’s a hell of a true story, one that Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Mike McAlary covered in his 1997 Esquire article “Mark of a Murderer.” Ostensibly that article is the basis for the film, which LaMarca himself is being shuttled about the country to promote.

So why, then, did screenwriter Ken Dixon change the details of LaMarca’s life? In reality, he was (and still is) a happily married man. In the film, LaMarca (played by Robert De Niro) is a divorced father who stops visiting his son Joey (James Franco) after his ex-wife (Patti Lupone) makes it “too difficult.” This breaks Joey’s heart, sending him into a downward spiral of heroin addiction in Long Beach, NY, a run down slum that was once Long Island’s Coney Island. But Vincent doesn’t seem too bothered about it, as he’s got a new life in Manhattan and a new love in his downstairs neighbor (Frances McDormand).

Maybe Dixon thought the divorce was a device to make LaMarca’s character more sympathetic. After all, a junkie kid from a broken home is more understandable than one from a nuclear family. But this alteration the first among many, including a far fetched, climactic shoot out is distracting to anyone familiar with LaMarca’s life, and misleading to those expecting something resembling fact.

Still, at least director Michael Caton Jones had the common courtesy to not put “based on a true story” in front of City by the Sea’s credits. That’s good because much of the film plays like a standard police movie with a familial twist. After killing a drug dealer, Joey goes on the lam, and Vincent wants to protect him. But he becomes the eye of a media storm fueled by his father’s criminal past, and the department pulls him from the case and puts him on forced leave. Thickening the plot further is the dead pusher’s boss (William Forsythe), who is out to whack Joey, and Gina (Eliza Dushku), Joey’s estranged girlfriend and mother of his son a child that Vincent doesn’t even know exists.

However, if you ignore the clichés and concentrate on City by the Sea’s interpersonal drama, it ain’t half bad. Even though he spends too much time reminding us that Long Beach is a city of broken dreams via flashbacks of its Eisenhower era heyday, Caton Jones keeps the story percolating steadily. (He also bravely uses computer graphics to insert the then standing World Trade Center.) Adding to the mix is Dixon’s dialogue. He may have run roughshod over the facts, but the screenwriter leavens the story with a surprising amount of humor as a put upon LaMarca has the worst week of his life.

Of course, the person selling LaMarca’s character is De Niro. He delivers a fine turn, which combines his usual tough guy persona and newfound comic sensibility with a raw emotion the actor hasn’t displayed for years. His LaMarca is a generally nice person confronting some serious skeletons in his closet, foremost of which is his strung out son. As Joey, Franco looks like a skeleton gaunt, pale, and twitchy. His performance matches his appearance, a bundle of nerves, he’s an anguished skin stretched too tight over a tortured soul. Nowhere is this young actor’s immense talent more apparent than in the scene where father and son confront each other under Long Beach’s boardwalk. The actor all but howls in pain during a James Dean worthy exchange that feels like a kick in the gut. It may be De Niro’s name on the poster, but City by the Sea is Franco’s movie. There won’t be any confusion about that.

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