First Hit: Wonderfully written and acted film that’s filled with lies and truth.
I’ll believe that you are who you say you are, if you believe that I am who I say I am. This is general tacit agreement we humans have with each other.
That statement captures the first two thirds of this film. This is the film "Greenberg" wanted to be, introspective, well acted and funny. The Rizzo family is in full bloom in this picture.
Vince (played by Andy Garcia) is a want to be actor who has a long career as a corrections officer. He also has a son from a previous relationship which his family doesn’t know about. He is married to Joyce (played by Julianna Margulies) who is angry and is a telephone receptionist.
Their children Vinni (played by Ezra Miller) and Vivian (played by Dominik Garcia-Lorido) have their own secrets. He has an obesity fetish and hers is that she is a stripper and not in college as her parents think. They live in The Bronx but on a little island called City Island which has its own peculiar characterization.
The family is loud and their over dinner conversations are a riot of jabs and barbs. Everyone smokes cigarettes and everybody conceals their habit from one another. Vince says he is going out to play poker when in-fact he is taking acting lessons. He doesn’t tell Joyce about his lessons because he thinks she’ll laugh at him and thinks he’s a fool for trying.
Joyce is suspicious that Vince is really having an affair instead of playing poker and because no one talks to each other honestly, the illusion grows. Vivian is stripping because she lost her scholarship in college for smoking pot on campus. She’s trying to make enough money to go back to school.
Lastly Vince discovers his first son Tony (played by Steven Strait); the son no one knows about, happens to be in his prison. He gets him released under his supervision and takes him home to meet the family he doesn't know about.
As the film reaches its chaotic climax, the laughs, truths, and realizations are vivid, well characterized and felt by the audience.
Garcia is absolutely great. This is the best I’ve ever seen him. Margulies is good as Garcia’s spousal foil. Strait is solid as the lost son. Miller and Garcia-Lorido fill their roles very well and keep the story alive and moving. Raymond De Felitta wrote and directed this film with perfect little touches which laid down the ground work so that each character was fully fleshed through scenes of interesting conversations and actions.
Overall: This was a wonderful film about the truth setting people free.