Max Riffner

The Parlor

My weblog work journal.  »Archives  »Links

State of Grace

Once March arrives, I get the desire to watch State of Grace. This is partially because St. Patrick’s Day features prominently in it (being March, naturally I think about it), but also because it reminds me of being a teen in the early ’90s, minus being a member of Irish organized crime. There are some key factors that hit me:

• Gary Oldman: This was one of many great performances that Gary Oldman put in at the first half of the decade. It feels like all I did between the years of 1990 and 1995 was watch Oldman chew through scenes.
• U2: The new U2 album dropping last week (first week of March) probably helped prompt this post, but again, the band’s music is woven through the film. Most likely because Phil Joanou (the film’s director) directed quite a few of the band’s music videos and the Rattle & Hum documentary. It fits well, framing some great scenes. Plus, being the early ’90s, I think all my friends were ga-ga for U2. I bought my first U2 album in the later half of the decade because it reminded me of lost friends that I missed.
• Jackie’s car: Jesus, I’m in love with that car. My friend had a ’74 Impala, battleship gray. It was a beast. A gun metal battleship transporting us all over town. My friend lived in a crap part of town (Park Ave, Omaha readers), and this scene just feels like a memory. Just a gritty, gray part of town in a blunt instrument of a car, numbing it’s occupants with booze (also, the Stones’ Street Fighting Man seals the deal):

Besides my life nostalgia bleedover, it’s a great little crime film despite being a glossy, fictional account about the end of the Westies¹. The cast includes Oldman, Sean Penn, Ed Harris, John Turturro, Robin Wright Penn, and John C. Reilly. Scalped‘s Jason Aaron included the film in a recent essay included in the back of Criminal (vol. 2, #2) titled “My Favorite TV Cops and Movie Tough Guys, Flaws and All.” If you don’t want to watch The Quiet Man yet again around the holiday, check it out.

¹ Like The Departed however, they kept in the fine Irish mobster tradition of using the severed hands of victims to lay prints down on used guns.

You can also browse through the Parlor archives.