• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

'One-Eye Jimmy' offers an underdeveloped plot,

sheepish charactersBy Brandon Wilson

Daily Bruin Contributor

The writer-director behind the new indie flick, "The Search for One-Eye Jimmy," may be the head writer for "Seinfeld," but none of that show's trademark wit or humor winds up on the big screen. At a slim 82 minutes, this would-be comedy is yet another inane ode to Brooklyn (with "Smoke," "Blue in the Face," and now this piffle, Brooklyn cinema has definitely hit a slump). Surely the filmmaker, Sam Henry Kass, thought the local color and eccentricities of Brooklynites would make for instant entertainment, but he's wrong. Instead the viewer is subjected to one pointless exchange after another in a film unafraid to use bodily functions to punctuate a joke.

Hoyt McCallany plays Les, a Brooklyn native, back home and fresh out of film school (with a set-up like this Kass displays his startling lack of imagination before the film has started its second reel). Les decides to make a documentary of sorts about the neighborhood, and every denizen of Red Hook, Brooklyn that Les and his mute cinematographer turn their camera on has some sort of superficial indicator of eccentricity: there's fast-talking Junior (Nick Turturro), a local hustler who always has an angle; there's Joe Head (Michael Baldalucco), a slacker whose most distinguishing feature is his sizable cranium; and then there's Ed Hoyt (Steve Buscemi), whose only source of income is charging five dollars for polaroids with a wrestling champ cut-out. Lest you think these characters are being oversimplified in this account, rest assured, there is nothing more to the aforementioned dramatis personae than what is listed. In fact, anyone in this film can be summed up with one short sentence without fear that some extra dimension will later be revealed which gives them any depth, reality or humanity.

The plot, what there is of it, centers around the search of the filmmakers, Junior, Joe Head, and Ed for Ed's brother, the titular Jimmy Hoyt. A loser of legendary proportions, it is unclear why anyone cares where he is; but of course this is all just a ruse to introduce a parade of neighborhood oddities along the way.

The problem is that none of them (with the possible exception of Tony Sirico's turn as a local goodfella) are particularly funny. What is truly mystifying is how Kass managed to interest talented, established actors like the Turturros (John also appears briefly), Buscemi and even Samuel L. Jackson in such a flimsy and anemic screenplay. Can we chalk it up to the irresistible urge even the best actors get to ham it up and shamelessly mug? Is it just a case of New Yorker solidarity gone too far? Or does Kass possess compromising photos which made his an offer they couldn't refuse?

Indulging in this kind of speculation is infinitely more entertaining than the remedial silliness on hand in "One-Eye Jimmy." Kass apparently has no clue as to what makes Brooklyn tick, let alone what's interesting about the people who live there; perhaps the filmmaker was so intent on debuting he didn't let the lack of a subject stop him. Such diligence, when properly guided, is honorable. But it will be clear to anyone who manages to sit through this film that the real search in the film is for either real wit, or a real story. In both cases, the search bears no fruit.

.

FILM: "The Search For One-Eye Jimmy" starring Nick Turturro, Steve Buscemi, Michael Badalucco and Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini. Written and directed by Sam Henry Kass.