City
of Ghosts
(MGM/UA) Rated NYR
Release date: Spring, 2003
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Starring: Matt Dillon, James Caan, Natascha McElhone,
Gérard Depardieu, Stellan Skarsgaard
Directed by: Matt Dillon
Produced by: Willi Baer, Deepak Nayar
Written by: Matt Dillon, Barry Gifford, Michael Jones
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Another director
with a history… but not behind the camera… is Matt Dillon,
whose CITY OF GHOSTS is getting good word-of-mouth.
Not so much in this corner.
The picture
looks good and Dillon does a nice job behind the camera.
On the other hand, the film needs to be cut by no less
than 20 minutes – Dillon shows an unfortunate tendency to
allow his actors, who deliver for their pal, to improv and
ham it up… which is fine if you cut that stuff out of the
picture. Dillon also
suffers First Time Directors Disease, which manifests itself
in too many close-ups. The result is that scenes are either made up
of large landscapes or all these close-ups.
Dillon also fails to find much depth behind his camera
choices. They aren’t bad. But they aren’t more than functional. Yet, there is a good chance that Matt will get past all of that
and may become a for-real director.
For now, City of Ghosts is not headed for anyone’s
must-see list.
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