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Gloria

1999, Movie, R, 108 mins

Gloria: Review

GLORIA
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A pale imitation of the John Cassavettes original, Sidney Lumet's dreary remake works neither as touching drama nor as a tough crime film. Blowsy Gloria (Sharon Stone) gets out of a Florida prison after taking the rap for scummy, NYC-based squeeze Kevin (Jeremy Northam), a midlevel gangster. She immediately violates parole by hopping a plane in hopes of collecting the money Kevin owes her. Meanwhile, in New York's Washington Heights, mild-mannered accountant Jack Nunez (Bobby Cannavale) and his wife Angela (Sarita Choudhury) are arguing because Jack has double-crossed the gangster he works for. When the inevitable hit man arrives to take out the Nunez family, only asthmatic, 7-year-old Nicky (Jean-Luke Figueroa) escapes. He's caught later, and when Gloria shows up at Kevin's place she can't help but wonder about the little boy wheezing in a side room. After rejecting Kevin's advances, she recklessly decides to rob him and takes off with a pile of cash and the kid, who has a computer disk Kevin needs. Never known as a crackling action director, Lumet is in soporific mode here, relentlessly draining the thrills out of the film's numerous car and foot chases. Even though lives are presumably on the line, none of the characters seem particularly scared, despite a script that requires them at regular intervals to repeat, "They're going to kill us. This is serious business." Stone does her best, wringing some poignancy out of the story of tough broad struggling with her first maternal stirrings, but she's defeated by the slack script and Lumet's flat direction. Lumet, whose best work includes such classic '70s crime pictures as PRINCE OF THE CITY and DOG DAY AFTERNOON, does shine in his realistically gritty portrayal of New York's nonglamorous precincts: But we've been there and done that, and so has he. leave a comment --Sandra Contreras
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Gloria's Miracle
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