NO DEPO$IT (Frank D’Angelo). 78 minutes. Opens Friday (June 18). Rating: N
Where to watch: iTunes
No Depo$it is the latest act of cinematic self-love from Toronto hyphenate Frank D’Angelo, the brewery magnate and restaurateur who makes terrible movies in his spare time and somehow books them into theatres.
Rolling into a modest release days after making its Canadian premiere at the Italian Contemporary Film Festival, No Depo$it stars Michael Paré as Mickey Ryan, a well-meaning New Yorker who loses his home thanks to the machinations of a Wall Street jerkbag (Eric Roberts).
In no time at all, Mickey’s hooking up with a thug (Michael Madsen) and helping him rob a bank in Brooklyn, which quickly escalates into a hostage situation. Among the hostages is Jimmy Valenti (D’Angelo), who’s determined to defuse the situation by delivering thoughtful monologues about doing the right thing.
Perhaps with a few rewrites and a competent director, No Depo$it might have been watchable. Instead, it’s atrocious – filled with clumsy sentimentality, ham-handed symbolism and long, long stretches of screen time that seem to exist so D’Angelo can squeeze another one of his musical performances onto the soundtrack. (You have not lived until you’ve heard him cover Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, I suppose.)
D’Angelo doesn’t seem to care about making a watchable movie. As with his previous features, Real Gangsters and The Big Fat Stone, the goal seems simply to cast himself in what he thinks is a complex role and share physical space with professional actors like Paré, Madsen, Roberts, Peter Coyote, Robert Loggia and Margot Kidder.
The film is simply the evidence that D’Angelo had a good time. The rest of us? Forget about it.
