Watch City Hall For Free

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Simply A Masterpiece

Just perfect...

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

"Think of it as colours. There's black, and there's white, and in between is mostly grey. That's us. Now grey is a tough colour, because it's not as simple as black and white - and for the media, certainly not as interesting. But... it's what we are." – Mayor Pappas A better third "Godfather" film than "Godfather 3", Harold Becker's "City Hall" stars Al Pacino as John Pappas, a New York mayor who's struggling to cope with the fallout of a recent homicide. Assisting Pappas is Kevin Calhoun (John Cusack), an idealistic deputy mayor.Much of "City Hall" takes the format of a noirish detective movie in which Calhoun uncovers the genre's usual morass of corruption, conspiracy and underhanded deals. A naive youngster from small-town Louisiana, Calhoun learns to both ditch his naivety and accept that high profile politics is a game rife with Machiavellian monsters. One such monster is Mayor Pappas, a charismatic master of realpolitik who floats between shadows, boardrooms and richly varnished woodwork like a late-career Michael Corleone. Pappas hopes to run for President, and like all self-deceiving villains, spends most of his time rationalizing everything he does in the name of "the greater good". Pappas may break a few rules, crack a few eggs, he says, but he's doing it for the city. For you.Pacino, unsurprisingly, injects Shakespearean grandeur into his character. He is the Greek scion of the megalopolis, treating Pappas' life as a theatre show, feigning compassion and humanity before lizard lips. Part of the fun of the movie is observing the way Pappas operates, stroking egos, placating enemies, winking at his own manipulations. Always juggling balls (contracts, business deals etc) in the air, he's more concerned with "menschkeite" - a Yiddish phrase meaning the bonds of honour between men of power – than his City and its occupants."City Hall" is no David Simon's "The Wire", an HBO TV series which attempted to sketch the workings of a large neo-liberal city, including several of its major organs (see too 1948's "The Naked City"). But it nevertheless does well to suggest the sheer size of New York City, the sheer interconnectedness and complexity of its social institutions, and the labyrinthine, vast and messy ways bureaucracies are run. At its best, "City Hall's" central mystery is used as a means of taking us on an inside-the-network tour of New York's political apparatus and, again like "The Wire", does well to show how the machine maintains power, how this power relates to different ethnic groups, and how cities turn otherwise well-meaning human beings into budget-brained pragmatists with so many conflicting loyalties, constituencies, and priorities that the essence of compromise starts flowing naturally through their veins. And of course, lording over this beautiful cesspit is John Pappas. Pacino – always an actor in love with scenery chewing – plays Pappas as the ultimate showman; a devil who delights in giving rousing speeches. One iconic moment sees Pacino unloading a giant monologue upon a crowded church. Whilst most actors would play the scene straight, Pacino disgorges his monologue with tongue firmly in cheek, amplifying the insincerity of Pappas' words. The film then climaxes with a beautiful scene in which Calhoun and Pappas square off in a tiny room. On the surface, their conversation is about Pappas' journey from idealism to corruption, but look closer and you can see Pappas subtly manipulating Calhon, trying to influence the young Deputy Mayor into pardoning him whilst also hinting that Calhoun will one day suffer his own personal fall from grace."City Hall" ultimately collapses into clichés (and a familiar "coming of age" climax). Still, Pacino is always entertaining, writers Paul Schrader and Nicholas Pileggi manage some good moments, and the film is rather unique in terms of mid-1990s, mainstream political thrillers. It was co-written by Ken Lipper, deputy mayor of New York under Ed Koch.7.9/10 - Worth two viewings. Makes a good companion piece to "The Contender", "Prince of the City" and "The Wire".

I think this movie is among the best political ones to depict what I lived in France since 10 years and especially the last five ones: what's a corrupt democracy ? In those situations, the elected ones have indeed a fabulous live: for the public, they are real demagogues, making beautiful and moving speeches while in reality, they use their authority and public goods to serve their own private interest. The difference between this movie and my reality is that those American shameful politicians when caught red handed are quick to resign or worst while in my country, they are totally immune. So, beware, this isn't a simple movie: if you miss the beginning, it's hard to understand as the facts are speedy and come from everywhere. Thus, the audience runs in all the NYC boroughs and the movie is really alive and interesting. At last, the casting is wonderful: I never appreciated Aiello and I was happy to see him playing a bastard. Cusac is perfect as a idealistic young man, Bridget was a courageous and sympathetic lawyer and Al gives us something else than to be a cop and i'm sure Vito would be pleased!

Working from a script written in part by Nicholas Pileggi, best known for writing the book Wiseguy, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing the book and screenplay Casino, director Harold Becker shows how connected circles scratch each other's backs, even in the command of a comparatively honorable mayor like Pappas, who is regarded as a presidential prospect. As Cusack follows the paper trail of the dead mobster's probation report, his skepticism is agitated. How did this violent young man get probation rather than a jail sentence? We meet the other players in the plot, not the least of which is Danny Aiello, the political boss of Brooklyn, and Tony Franciosa, the Mafia boss whose nephew was shot dead. How and why these people are affiliated I leave to the movie to divulge, though there are never any misgivings that they are.The narrative is told generally through the eyes of the Cusack character, a visionary from Louisiana who admires his boss and hopes to learn from him. Much is made by everyone of bureaucratic knowledge passed down through the generations. Some of the dialogue is ungracefully erudite, but considering I just described the building blocks of the story as bureaucratic knowledge, one can't say it doesn't work. The shooting case builds against the seasoning of two other issues on the mayor's desk: a charge by Aiello for a subway stop and an off-ramp in Brooklyn to aid a new banking center, and the city's bid for the next Democratic convention. Individual idiosyncrasies are also explored, including Aiello's emotional bond with the music of Rogers and Hammerstein.Much also is made of menschkeit, a Yiddish expression, which, Pappas explains to his deputy, is about the bond of honor between two men, about what happens between the two hands in a handshake. This connection doesn't mean much to Bridget Fonda, the lawyer for the policeman's association who defends the dead cop's honor and fights for his widow's pension even as incriminating evidence appears. Little by little, the deputy mayor comes to grasp that menschkeit is such an influential notion that it outclasses he law.There are various scenes of hard impact, including one where the Brooklyn boss comes home for lunch in the middle of the day, his wife asserts her interest through the medium of the dish she has cooked, and then the Mafia boss drops in by surprise. There is also a compelling, and markedly conjectural, late scene between the mayor and his deputy.One scene handled with delicacy is comprised of the mayor's decision to speak at the funeral of the slain child, in a Harlem church. His advisers tell him he won't be wanted there. But he goes anyway, and cranks himself up for a spiel of unabashed hyperbole, Pacino and his character both.It gets an impressive reaction from the congregation, but the mayor knows, and his deputy knows, that it was artificial, and the way they scrupulously evade discussing it, in the limousine taking them away, is a subtle employment of composure and innuendo. This is a script that knows it has to supply Pacino with the reason why most of his fans go to see him, and immediately follows its quota with the reality that silence has much more inherent meaning than speech.Pacino and Cusack are convincing together throughout the movie, the older man unbreakable and aware, the younger one anxious to learn, but with ideals that don't sway. Pacino is innate with his down-to-earth capacity to marry common sense and inventive imagination, inspired flair and matter-of-fact realism. Cusack moves very freely in spite of his dark defensiveness.The Bridget Fonda subplot development is unnecessary, but it is a result of veteran screenwriter Paul Schrader's otherwise shrewdly perceptive belief in the worth of every character, and each is fleshed into earnest embodiments. Aiello, for instance, is a highlight because he evokes his character's joie de vivre and sensitivity to his environment.

Admittedly, I find Al Pacino to be a guilty pleasure. He was a fine actor until Scent of a Woman, where he apparently overdosed on himself irreparably. I hoped this film, of which I'd heard almost nothing growing up, would be a nice little gem. An overlooked, ahead-of-its-time, intelligent and engaging city-political thriller. It's not.City Hall is a movie that clouds its plot with so many characters, names, and "realistic" citywide issues, that for a while you think its a plot in scope so broad and implicating, that once you find out the truth, it will blow your mind. In truth, however, these subplots and digressions result ultimately in fairly tame and very familiar urban story trademarks such as Corruption of Power, Two-Faced Politicians, Mafia with Police ties, etc. And theoretically, this setup allows for some thrilling tension, the fear that none of the characters are safe, and anything could happen! But again, it really doesn't.Unfortunately, the only things that happen are quite predictable, and we're left with several "confession" monologues, that are meant as a whole to form modern a fable of sorts, a lesson in the moral ambiguity of the "real world" of politics and society. But after 110 minutes of names and missing reports and a spider-web of lies and cover-ups, the audience is usually treated to a somewhat satisfying reveal. I don't think we're left with that in City Hall, and while it's a very full film, I don't find it altogether rich.