 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 540: 08.25.22 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 24. Just thinking about this website/project on the whole (not just the Cage miniseries): my biggest mistake was feeling like I needed to write a review to coincide with EVERY single podcast. Sometimes, I just don't have much to say (write), and I find myself struggling to fill in the white space with words (any words), kind of like what I'm doing right this very second. I somehow managed to get 25 minutes of talking recorded about this movie. And I seriously think that's all I got. (And, in fact, that should be enough!) Because, folks, The Cotton Club and all its effervescent jazziness were just Not. For. Me. Unlike the Billy Crystals of the world, a "Jazzman" I am not. So lemme slog through a couple more sentences in order to showcase the work of a young Nicolas Cage and a couple other notable moments from what feels like a minor Frances Ford Coppola mid-period work. |
The plot of this is basically: jazz!, and a dueling mob war between the Jewish and the Irish factions, and Gregory Hines tap-dancing. There is one shocking moment of ultra violence that is so out of step with the rest of the film...
There we're introduced to Diane Lane's character. She's the young mistress of the guy who did the stabbing, "The Dutchman," head of the Jewish mafia. Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne are on the Irish side (the Italians, classic mafia guys, aren't really in this... smdh).
I'll be honest, between the nearly nonstop jazz routines and musical segments, this whole thing felt like a series of montages and I was TUNING OUT hardcore. But you know what? It's not real life, it's jazz...
...and that's just something I need to accept.
At some point it's decided that Richard Gere and his weird haircut should be an actor? And so these movie guys make it happen (or they don't, not sure, don't remember)...
That's comedy!
All the while, Cage gets deeper into #MobLife and shit goes south when members of his crew, while attempting a hit, end up killing a few innocent bystanders, including children. So he kidnaps Fred Gwynne before his brother Richard Gere shows up to talk some sense into him. It's a nice proto-Cageian freakout...
But they shoot Cage anyway and honestly Richard Gere doesn't seem to shook up about it.
The central story here is really a romantic one between Diane Lane and Richard Gere. She's forbidden fruit being the mob boss's chick and such. Things come to a head and "The Dutchman" is about to shoot Gere, but thankfully Gregory Hines tap-dance drop-kicks the gun away before he can pull the trigger...
And that's that. Bob Haskins' crew kills "The Dutchman" and Richard and Diane live happily ever after. Ironically, I think if they had removed the actual Cotton Club from The Cotton Club (i.e., the jazz) I would have enjoyed it a lot more (and it would have been forty minutes shorter). Oh well.
Next chapter will feature an even smaller Cage role but what should be a much more enjoyable movie.
THE VERDICT: 5 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 539 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 541 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 539 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 541 ⫸
The Cotton Club is a 1984 American crime drama film co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and based on James Haskins' 1977 book of the same name. The story centers on the Cotton Club, a Harlem jazz club in the 1930s. The film stars Richard Gere, Gregory Hines, Diane Lane, and Lonette McKee, with Bob Hoskins, James Remar, Nicolas Cage, Allen Garfield, Gwen Verdon, Fred Gwynne, and Laurence Fishburne in supporting roles. It was released on December 14, 1984.
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