Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)

"Last Exit to Brooklyn" treats its many unseemly social and sexual issues in an unflinching and unashamedly forthright manner, but even more than this it is the generous assortment of heartless characters inhabiting this sordid and squalid depiction of Brooklyn which almost makes the whole film unwatchable while simultaneously creating the biggest impression of all. They embody the worst and the most close-minded and negative people to be found on the face of the planet. However, such unsettling repugnance is also strangely compelling and fascinating and it has been brilliantly brought to the screen with great skill and expertise to produce one of the most controversial, thought-provoking, and unforgettably assaultive motion pictures of the 1980's.

Set amidst some fairly violent industrial turmoil, this potpourri of stories focuses on some of the diversity that existed, though it didn’t necessarily thrive, in 1950s NYC. The local factory is the centre of the troubles as the dockers take strike action, galvanised by their leaders “Harry” (Stephen Lang) and the manipulative “Boyce” (Jerry Orbach). Meantime, the striking in an altogether different manner “Tralala” (Jennifer Jason Leigh) rather menacingly plies her feminine wares on the unsuspecting but horned up military until she begins to fall a little for one of her more decent uniformed clientele and sees the glimmer of an hope she could escape this cycle of hopelessness. With tensions running high amidst their community, we also discover that the married “Harry” also has a penchant for blokes and that communism and illegitimate children are further stoking the angst in this increasingly diffuse and angry township. The story itself plays out well enough and I felt that both Leigh and Lang played their parts with quite some skill, but somehow there is just too much going on to cram into one hundred minutes and some of the more characterful subplots (i.e. “Big Joe” (Burt Young)) are sidelined or too undercooked to make enough impact on the storyline that Uli Eden has decided to focus on. That said, though, the two principal characters are exposed to the cruelties and double standards of the day in a fashion that looks authentic, gritty and is frequently violent and uncomfortable to watch. Therein lies much of the success of this quite potent look at mob rule and intolerance disguised as democracy and freedom, but on the whole, given the plethora of topics covered in the much more visceral book, I felt it disappointed.