This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
A Love to Die For
Plot Overview
Longhair Jonesy (Peter
Fernandez) is lead guitar in a mixed-race sextet doing gig work. He falls
for pretty Bonnie (Natalie Jovanovic) a waitress at The Edge, a
nightclub run by a gangster-type Sam (Sam Malavita.) Jonesy steals her
from a punk junky by claiming a phony record deal. Now he needs to find a
creative way to make the money he claims to have, but he's a musician, not
a crook, so he teams up with Cowboy (Owen Comaskey) a stranger he meets at
the bar to rob Sam. Sam's goons come looking for Jonesy at his apartment
where they discover Bonnie waiting to give him a “special
night.” They take her hostage. Jonesy comes to the rescue only to be
collared by Cowboy who wants the other's share of the loot. On the way out
of the building they collide with Sam's reinforcements and
there's a shootout in the stairwells. The neurotic building super (Rick Poli) calls the police to
report gunfire. The warring factions hole up in various apartments
& on the roof until the skeptical cops leave, then they resume their
donnybrook.
Ideology
Cowboy having an American sobriquet and a thick limey accent is most peculiar for a Brit, whose island nation was characterized by Upton Sinclair as, “England, with lovely gardens, and quiet homes, and people reserved, never telling their troubles unless they knew you well” (609). He started off by asking a depressed Jonesy to, “Tell me everything.” Seems like this interlude gets the guitar man to throw ordinary caution to the wind, forgetting the sensible, (Prov. 30:7) “Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die.” The rest of his story we get through hard-bitten narration, that being a musician was “in my blood,” both his father and grandfather before him were (“I come from a long line of guys who never added up to nothing.”) His dad drank himself to death after, “he had to get a real job when I was born.”
Jonesy looking for a way to impress his new girlfriend could be an object lesson for, (Prov. 30:8-9) “Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.” Get-rich-quick schemes of any ilk will involve “vanity and lies,” which if they work will make one so rich as to deny his dependence on God, and if they don't work will leave one poor enough to steal and swear he didn't take it. Cowboy tells how he bet $1K on a horse that came in dead last, so he took it out on the guy who gave him the tip.
The movie shows Jonesy doing okay.
He gets repeat gigs, he owns three guitars, he rents an ample apartment,
and after buying groceries & cigarettes he has beer money left
over. Then he gets a girlfriend who likes trinkets and he feels
like small potatoes. But Alberto (Louis Vega) the janitor being paid
under the table can still afford both a wife and a
girlfriend. And while Sam flashes a bigger bankroll than Jonesy,
he's also a “bigger asshole.”
Being fed with “food convenient
for me” is illustrated in the apartment scenes. Cowboy having
invaded someone's digs eats a modest Hungry Man's dinner from
the fridge and chucks out the window a bag of dope big enough for
some bum's pillow. The hoods meanwhile are chowing down on
“authentic pasta” provided by a mama obligated by old-world
hospitality (“Mangi!
Mangi!”—Eat! Eat!) The beaner Alex couldn't show
up for work after some Mexican food gave him the runs.
Production Values
“” (1992) was directed by Paul Rodrigues and Giuseppe Romano. It was cleverly written by George Deberis. It stars Peter Jay Fernandez, Natalie Jovanovic and Owen Comaskey. The female parts were well acted, the male not so much.
It was certified 18 in the United Kingdom; it includes an off-camera implicit rape. The sound & lighting were the pits, although the hollow ambiance did add to the tension. The sporadic, detached narration helped limit its runtime to 1 hour 24 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
This is a hard-boiled home invasion story that moves in spirals, which could appeal to action aficionados who demand lots of shooting irrespective of ammunition supply. With low expectations it's endurable but don't bring an argumentative date.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action-packed. Suitability for Children: Suitable for adults 18+ years. Special effects: Wake up and smell the 1990s technology. Video Occasion: Better than watching TV. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Print.
Sinclair, Upton. Dragon Harvest. Copyright Upton Sinclair, 1945. New York: Viking Press, 1945. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org