Waiting
on Alphie is the story of a has-been criminal named
Alphie who's been booted out of his hometown of Chicago
and now makes his living as a two-bit assistant to one
of the crime families of New York. One day, as Alphie
is grabbing a bite to eat at his regular spot at a little
diner in a rundown mall, Gus-a former lieutenant of his
from Chicago-shows up and sits across the table from him.
Gus explains that he's been sent to keep Alphie in hand
while a mob investigation is going on involving Alphie's
whereabouts 10 days prior. According to Gus, a phone in
the diner will ring when the investigation is completed.
The voice on the other end will tell Gus to either cap
Alphie or give him an airline ticket. If Alphie tries
to flee, then Gus is to cap him. Other than that, the
two of them are to just stay put.
When
the phone fails to ring for an ungodly amount of time,
both Alphie and Gus find themselves pulled into conversations
about their past, morality, breakfast food, and the state
of the world today. The wait is further complicated by
the fact that Gus never eats when he's on a job, and he's
slowly getting more and more cranky as the night wears
on, especially since Alphie seems bent on ordering everything
on the menu. To make matters worse, their waiter for the
evening is a sullen, neo-hippie sporting a variety of
facial piercings. (Think Randall from Clerks with darker
hair and multiple lip, nose, and ear-rings.)
Content
Whenever
I sit down to critique a film, I watch the film by myself
the first time through, eyes wide open for both successes
and problems. With this site devoted to such a wide variety
of Indie film, I never know what I'm going to encounter
when I screen a film for the first time.
As I
let Waiting on Alphie pull me in, I found a really
great, quirky wit in Kevin Hicks' screenplay that reminded
me of a cross between Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith.
While I appreciated this humor myself watching the movie
solo, I really took note of how well it interacted with
an audience when I sat down to watch it with a small group
of reviewers for my second viewing. The lithe dialogue and
non-sequitor bunny trails made Waiting on Alphie as fascinating
to watch the second time as it was the first time.
Unlike
many Indie films that have a few well realized characters
and at least one or two that end up being boat anchors,
Waiting on Alphie had a singularly believable cast
throughout. Of course, they really only had three main characters,
but the fact that each one stayed in a very interesting
place throughout the film is a real testament to the triune
of good acting, good directing, and good writing. The chemistry
that unfolds between Gus and Alphie is interesting as the
two old-garde mobsters feel one another out in a way that
is reminiscent of Vincent and Jules in Pulp Fiction.
On the other hand, the chemistry between the more old-school
Gus and the New Hippie, vegan server is hilarious, allowing
a very Clerks-ish 'I hate customers'-vibe to surface.
(And whenever the air gets too tense between Gus and Alphie,
Mr. Hicks is always willing to allow that moment to become
a comic interlude where we find out what the server is doing
to other customers or the kitchen staff. The server character
is so much fun, in fact, that you can't help hoping that
Mr. Hicks will make a spin-off movie entirely about him!)
Gus
is a hitman that's not
having a very good day...
...and
Alphie's a has-been
that's afraid his life is about to end.
Despite
all the good elements in the film, there are a few problems.
However, before I go further, I must warn any readers that
haven't watched this film yet that there are spoilers ahead.
Due to the problems that surface in the film, it is not
possible for me to critique them without giving them away.
As such, you can skip into the visual look section if you
would prefer not to read the spoilers.
Mr.
Hicks manages to weave a compelling story through a largely
dialogue and editing driven film, bringing you to the end
of the tale with some very interesting twists. Unfortunately,
when he gets to the end and everything looks like it is
about to be wrapped up in a satisfactory manner, he throws
in one too many twists.
He basically
ran into the same flaw that the movie, The Ring, had: the
flaw of continuing on after it should have ended. In The
Ring, the end of the film should have come when the water
swirls down the drain (which is a ring symbol that they
open the film with) and the mystery has been solved. However,
for some unexplained reason, the film lurches out of a suspense
movie with a definable ending for another five minutes into
a true horror movie that has no ending. (The actual reason
for The Ring's ending is a confusing psychology conflict
that boils down to a translation problem from the Japanese
Ringu and would take far too much time to recap here.)
To actually
include the spoiler that I forewarned of before, Mr. Hicks
has followed a very nice use of writing symmetry for this
film. When the film starts out, Gus, the assassin, is the
strong one, whereas Alphie, the has-been, is the weak one.
However, by the end of the movie, Alphie has used his brains
to become the strong one despite the Gus's superior brawn.
Moreover, in a well choreographed bit of foreshadowing in
the middle of the movie, we find out that Alphie is willing
to stake his life on good winning over evil, and we're given
no reason to believe that Alphie isn't the 'more good' of
the two main characters (even though he's never made out
to be a saint).
Had
the film concluded there, with Alphie in a place of strength
through his cunning over Gus' thuggery, we would have found
a very satisfying conclusion, especially since no one who
watches a crime film ever expects the film to end without
one of the main characters ending up dead. The very act
of concluding the film with a maddeningly well orchestrated
truce that allows Alphie to get out of New York and leaves
Gus stranded there would have been brilliantly unexpected.
However,
as I mentioned before, the film gets to the end, and then
keeps going.
Waiting
on Alphie is the story of a has-been criminal named
Alphie who's been booted out of his hometown of Chicago
and now makes his living as a two-bit assistant to one
of the crime families of New York. One day, as Alphie
is grabbing a bite to eat at his regular spot at a little
diner in a rundown mall, Gus-a former lieutenant of his
from Chicago-shows up and sits across the table from him.
Gus explains that he's been sent to keep Alphie in hand
while a mob investigation is going on involving Alphie's
whereabouts 10 days prior. According to Gus, a phone in
the diner will ring when the investigation is completed.
The voice on the other end will tell Gus to either cap
Alphie or give him an airline ticket. If Alphie tries
to flee, then Gus is to cap him. Other than that, the
two of them are to just stay put. 
