Another harrowing detour to hell, not for the squeamish or prudish, this blistering adaptation of Hubert Selby’s shocking short-story collection about violence and suffering in the Brooklyn slums of the early 1950s is like watching a gang rape. You are horrified but unable to do anything about what you’re seeing.
Here are frank and explicit themes of homosexuality, prostitution, drug addiction, gang warfare, and union corruption that will make even the toughest viewer wince.
But the acting is superb – especially Jennifer Jason-Leigh as Tralala, a wounded, burned-out 19-year-old whore who runs a scam with a local neighbourhood gang headed up by the brutal Vinnie (Peter Dobson), seducing intoxicated servicemen from the nearby Brooklyn Naval Yard into a deserted vacant lot so that they can get robbed and beaten up by the gang (which includes Stephen Baldwin and a very young Sam Rockwell).
Gruff, two-fisted dockworker – and strike leader – Harry Black (Stephen Lang) discovers his true sexual identity with transvestite hooker Georgette (Alexis Arquette, Rosanna’s brother), whose longing for the brutal Vinnie leads to disaster.
One of the striking workers is Big Joe (Burt Young), whose daughter Donna (a young Ricki Lake) is pregnant.
“She ain’t pregnant, she’s just fat!” Big Joe insists, even in the eighth month, and yet when he discovers it is true, he finds it his duty to beat up the responsible boy – then embrace him as a future son-in-law, and then beat him up some more at the wedding.
The bleak mosaic of Brooklyn’s lower depths has a weird beauty, like a canvas by Bruegel.
Harry Black
Stephen Lang Tralala
Jennifer Jason Leigh Vinnie
Peter Dobson Big Joe
Burt Young Donna
Ricki Lake Boyce
Jerry Orbach Sal
Stephen Baldwin Tony
Jason Andrews Freddy
James Lorinz Al
Sam Rockwell Mary Black
Maia Danziger Ella
Camille Saviola Spook
Cameron Johann Tommy
John Costelloe Paulie
Christopher Murney Georgette
Alexis Arquette
Director Uli Edel
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Here are frank and explicit themes of homosexuality, prostitution, drug addiction, gang warfare, and union corruption that will make even the toughest viewer wince.
Harry Black
