Review of Pope Of Greenwich Village, The

Introduction

For a while, in the mid Eighties, Mickey Rourke could have been a contender. Sure, he was never a great actor but a couple of decent performances in slightly off-centre films like Angel Heart left audiences wondering what he would do next. Prayer For The Dying? Barfly? Johnny Handsome? Forget it.

Before that, though, he had made a slew of mediocre films such as The Pope of Greenwich Village. In this film, Rourke plays Charlie an Italian American living in Greenwich Village in NYC. Charlie is best friends with his cousin - the phenomenally stupid Paulie (played by Eric Roberts). Trying to scratch a living and constrained by their sense of family and loyalty to "the neighbourhood", they participate in a burglary. However, they unfortunately burgle the local mob boss and steal protection money meant for corrupt cops. Needless to say, violence ensues.

The Pope Of Greenwich Village takes it cues from The Godfather and films like Mean Streets. However it isn`t played deadly seriously and there are some attempts at humour. Overall, though, it is a dull and lifeless affair.

Video

Video is letterboxed at 1.85:1 and doesn`t look too bad. It`s a little soft and a little grainy but overall it looks reasonable. There is some interesting early Eighties NYC atmosphere but the visuals are perfunctory and unimaginative.

Audio

Audio is presented in DD 2.0 and sounds Pretty poor. Despite being billed as DD 2.0, it sounds like mono duplicated in both left and right channels.

The sound is thin and sibilant and sounds especially bad on the Sinatra song, "Summer Wind". The score by Dave Grusin is dull and unimaginative and makes too much use of cascading synthdrum sounds and some irritating Oirishisms.

Features

The only extra is a dull trailer.

Conclusion

The Pope Of Greenwich has little to recommend it, other than perhaps some spectacularly bad overacting from Eric Roberts. Not just bad, mind you. Spectacularly bad - "They tooook my thuuumb, Chaaarlieeee". Roberts is so bad that he makes everybody else look good, even Rourke who is no great shakes himself. The only decent performance comes from Geraldine Page as a corrupt cop`s mother.

The plot is clichéd and the direction uninspired.

Overall, the film isn`t worth wasting 115 minutes one and the disk does nothing to redeem it.