"People think that Hell is fire and brimstone and the Devil poking you in the butt with a pitchfork, but it's not. Hell is when you should have walked away, but you didn't."- Jack Grimaldi
I don't know about you- but This Bug loves downbeat crime films. I'd talk about my favorite one but we'd be here all day. So the runner-up is just one of my all time favorites, Romeo Is Bleeding . This is a slept on classic that few know about. Recently, I resurrected this movie and was reminded of how much I love it.
Jack Grimaldi, played flawlessly by Gary Oldman- is far from perfect. He has a main chick, a mistress and a young b*tch. Forget it he's a Don! ( Insert shameless Jay-Z reference here.) But the revolving door of women is the least of his imperfections. He's a dirty cop who profits from giving up the secret locations of stool pigeons who are about to testify against former partners in crime. It goes without saying that they never make it to the swear-in, feel me? It pays well, but he gets greedy. Before he knows it, he's up to his eyeballs in Mob ties and then the hammer comes down. It's not long before he finds himself in some very precarious situations.
Enter the dangerous seductress Mona Demarkov...the sultriest, meanest, baddest assassin you'll ever see in thigh highs. Good Lord, this woman is a force to be reckoned with. Her weaponry lies in her manly strength disguised by an ultra-femme persona. She is deliciously over-the-top insane. Lena Olin's personification of evil makes the coldest hit man look like Tickle Me Elmo. She runs circles around Jack with her hypnotic wiles. Which is relatively easy considering his penchant for the sweet stuff every woman has by default.
Anyway, I won't give away too much about this movie. There are some notable performances by Annabella Sciora as Jack's passive but pensive wife (of Jungle Fever fame) and Roy "You're gonna need a bigger boat. " Schneider (of Jaws fame) as the crime boss you don't want to f*ck with. I implore everyone to rent this film if you haven't seen it already. It has all the ingredients of a pitch perfect Film Noir. Dark, sexy, thrilling...and bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.
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