Lushly filmed on location in New York City, CITY HALL is the story of Deputy Mayor Kevin Calhoun (John
Cusack) -- an ambitious, slickly competent operative who's equal parts Jim Carville and George Stephanopolous -- and Hizzoner, Mayor John Pappas (Al Pacino), surrogate father and would-be savior of a dying city. There's a thriller plot here (a police shooting unravels a city-wide skein of
corruption), but it's relatively unimportant. Harold Becker's movie is about an Oedipal clash of will that is as passionate and romantically conceived as any love story; in a broader sense, it's about
menschkeit -- a bastardized Yiddish term describing the homosocial netwo...
Released:
1996
Rated:
R
Length:
111 mins