Vincent Patrick
I know what you're thinking, why is this girl reviewing a B movie with Mickey Rourke? Well, I'm not. For one of my classes this semester I was required to read the novel for Pope of Greenwich Village before we watch the movie in class next week. I wasn't really looking forward to starting this because it seemed so far out of my comfort zone. It turns out that that feeling was warranted. Pope of Greenwich Village follows a slew of characters around as they laugh at the ineffective police, do some petty crime, do some less petty crime and get involved in mob stuff. But mostly Patrick has us following the 5th cousins Paulie and Charlie.
I had a really hard time getting into this. I felt that about 95% of the characters being introduced were either pitiful or terrible. I guess I just didn't feel that any of the characters, aside from Charlie were even remotely likable. However my main problem wasn't how irritating these characters were, but instead with how randomly some of them were introduced. Each chapter would switch viewpoints, often to people, like random cops, who weren't really involved in the main story. Usually I don't mind several different perspectives but for some reason I didn't feel it worked well here.
I guess for being a New York crime/mafia/poor guy trying to get by it's not bad. This just wasn't the story for me. I'm interested to see how different the film is from the book. My teacher keeps telling me it's a good adaptation, so I guess I'll see next Tuesday.
2 comments:
Yeah, this is definitely a story that is dated -- I remember when it came out and it was sort of that beginning of when some stories of police inefficiencies came to light, so at the time, this story was fairly timely in the theaters and really caused quite a stir. Now, it's probably more of a yawn in this day and age..
I nominated you for an award http://inthe-outhouse.blogspot.com/2010/10/huge-thank-you-to-cozy-readers-corner.html
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