The Family
takes the normal mafia movie and turns it into a dark comedy, that just plain
works.
A family
that plays together stays together, and this family sure knows how to play
together, maybe a little too well. They are a mob unto themselves, and that is
part of their problem. After, second generation mob boss Fred Manzoni (Robert
DeNiro) turns informant he, his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and their
children Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D'Leo) are placed into witness
protection and moved to a sleepy town in France.
Despite the
best efforts of Agent Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones), all of the Manzoni’s
operate on a hair trigger temper, and resort to the type of violence Michael
Corelone would be proud of to solve their problems. Whether its dad using a
baseball bat and a sledgehammer on a plumber who tries to rip him off, mom
blowing up supermarkets that don’t carry peanut butter, Belle using a tennis
racket to beat some sense into the face of a would-be creep or Warren working
the angles at school for profit and bone-crunching revenge, its easy to see how
the mob could follow the bloodied bread crumbs to the family’s doorstep.
Did I
mention this was a comedy? The Family plays on this fine line of cheerful
violence and sick humor, with a deliberately off-kilter effort that sort of
makes it all work. The only complaint is Manzoni’s lack of motivation for
snitching and murdering his associates. There are plenty of flashbacks, but
this little key nugget fails to reveal himself, and leaves the audience drawing
its own conclusions as the Family heads into a very bloody conclusion.
Robert De
Niro truly shines in this movie, finally going back to that unstable man with
psychopathic tendencies we love. The affection for his family shines through
even as he’s beating the crap out of someone. He showcases a full range of
emotions even as he’s dropping the f-bomb all over the place.
Although
Michelle Pfeiffer and Dianna Argon are as perfect molls displaying equal parts empathy and violent tendencies, but Tommy Lee Jones does
some pretty great deadpan, stealing scenes everytime. Sure he’s perfected this look in a number of movies,
cough cough Men in Black, but the shtick
works here just as well. And playing wrangler to this crazy family certainly helps with the comedic factor.
Bottom line,
The Family is a twisted comedy, that pays plenty of homage to classic gangster
films.
The Family
hit dvd December 17th, so it’s available now.
