Film Review: Welcome to Collinwood (dir. A. Russo & J. Russo, 2002)

This crime caper never gets off the ground. And by never, I mean never. The Russo brothers, of Cleveland, seem to think that the set-up is the whole story; this film is all set-up, with no pay-off whatsoever. Indeed, the heist never even gets pulled, not really. The idea seems to be to put a bunch of funny characters together, give them some idiosyncratic dialogue (think that Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead movie, and then some), plus a heist to pull off, and then watch them fail. But none of the characters is really that interesting or, for that matter, really a character at all. In the end, all the characters with room for growth "grow," I guess, but I didn't really care by that point. The heist is never really all that clear to me--a pawnbroker's safe? With $ 300k inside? Really?
Some of the actors have real charisma, but it would have been nice to give them something to do. I would single out Sam Rockwell and Patricia Clarkson especially. Clarkson is a real knock-out, even if she's not 22 anymore. Clooney's short appearance is really a cameo, and an odd one at that. William H. Macy is the same as always.

I was living in Cleveland when this film came out, but I didn't see it until moving to D.C. Maybe I've been feeling a little nostalgic? Nah--it's only been about two months. But I had some concerns about the movie back then that dampened my enthusiasm. I was worried at the time that people in Cleveland were so starved for attention that just setting a movie here would get them excited beyond justification. True. Plus, the city gets pretty short shrift, here. For one thing, the film isn't set in a real Cleveland, but in some fictionalized, 1930s Depression-era city, with modern characters. Collinwood is a very depressed, post-industrial neighboorhood on the far-east side (near the Lake and I-90). But I never saw sections of the city that looked like this. Mostly they looked like movie sets. Some of the movie was shot on location--one location in the Flats is recognizable, and the heist is supposed to go down on Chester Avenue--maybe. There's a Rapid train in one shot, and Terminal Tower graces many a background. But no shot of Public Square, the Lake, the football stadium (?), the River . . . even American Splendor did a better job of showcasing the city.

I don't usually give bad reviews, but consider this a bad review.