City of Hope **** (1991, Vincent Spano, Tony Lo Bianco, Stephen Mendillo, Joe Morton, Barbara Williams, Chris Cooper, Kevin Tighe, David Strathairn) – Classic Movie Review 8948

Writer-director John Sayles’s 1991 movie City of Hope is a splendidly confident dissection of a city’s despair over its race clashes, its poor, its past and its future.

Vincent Spano heads a large ensemble cast as Nick Rinaldi, an Italian boy who gets in trouble with the cops, with Tony Lo Bianco as his father Joe Rinaldi, who is forced to commit arson on his old block of poor people’s apartments to save his boy. Both actors are particularly good, but so is the entire cast, with the possible exception of Sayles himself who gives a caricature performance as the chief bad guy, Carl.

But for his persuasive screenplay, coherent editing and distinguished, controlled direction he is easily forgiven. If it looks like a John Cassavetes film, it is only pretend cine-verité, as it is all very carefully organised to have a fly-on-the-wall feel. Maybe it is just a bit too structured. Its tale of two black youths who beat up a white teacher when he is out jogging, get caught and claim he tried to molest one of them leads to interesting but pat moral dilemmas.

However, City of Hope is a very impressive, ambitious film thriller, pulling off the difficult trick of intertwining five storylines involving more than 30 characters.

Vincent Spano and Tony Lo Bianco star in City of Hope.

Also in the cast are Joe Morton, Barbara Williams, Stephen Mendillo, Chris Cooper, Tony Lo Bianco, Kevin Tighe, David Strathairn, Todd Graff, John Sayles, Lawrence Tierney, Joe Grifasi, Charlie Yanko, Jace Alexander, Artie Rose, Frankie Faison, Gloria Foster, Tom Wright, Angela Bassett, Miriam Colon, Louis Zorich, Josh Mostel, Bill Raymond, and Gina Gershon.

City of Hope is directed by John Sayles, runs 129 minutes, is made by Esperanza Films and The Samuel Goldwyn Company, is released by The Samuel Goldwyn Company (1991) (US) and Mainline Pictures (1991) (UK), is written by John Sayles, is shot by Robert Richardson, is produced by Sarah Green and Maggie Renzi and is scored by Mason Daring, with Production Design by Dan Bishop and Dianna Freas.

It is set in New Jersey but was filmed in Cincinnati, Ohio. Sayles gets huge value for his $3,000,000 budget, but it still struggled at the box office, taking $1,345,015 in the US and a similar amount elsewhere, though, even so, video sales would have kept it in profit.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8948

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