City Hall (1996)

Starring: Al Pacino, John Cusack, Bridget Fonda, Danny Aiello, Martin Landau, and David Paymer, with a cameo from Drew Carey’s dad from The Drew Carey Show
Grade: C

It doesn’t get said enough, but Al Pacino’s hair is immaculate.

Summary

In New York City, Deputy Mayor Kevin Calhoun (Cusack) tells us through narration that one day Mayor John Pappas (Pacino) was giving the key to the city to the governor of Toyko at some ceremonial function. As Pappas goes on with his speech, Calhoun sings his praises to us, calling him the best mayor NYC has ever had. However, an incident with Det. Eddie Santos (Nestor Serrano) changes everything. Santos was on his way to a meeting with Tino Zapatti (Larry Romano), a small-time drug dealer “whose only distinction was that he was nephew to Paul Zapatti (Anthony Franciosa), a mafia boss”. Also involved are Tino’s rat cousin Vinnie (Angel David), who Santos has in his pocket, and a six-year-old child named James Bone. Going into this, Vinnie rides with Santos to a street corner. Since Santos wants a word with Tino, he tells Vinnie to get out of the car and turn Tino away from him when he approaches. As Tino waits on the street corner, James Bone waits to cross the street with his dad. Vinnie does his job as a distraction, greeting Tino. As he runs away, Santos approaches Tino. Immediately, Tino turns and shoots Santos. Once he hits the ground, Santos fires back at Tino. As he’s hit, Tino still shoots his gun in the air and the stray bullet from Tino’s gun hits and kills James Bone. Tino dies too, and Santos is dying.

Back at the ceremonial function, Calhoun gets word of pressing news, so he motions to Pappas to cut his speech short. In the Mayor’s limo, Calhoun tells Pappas about the shooting. He notes that Santos is still alive, but it doesn’t look good. They also don’t know officially whose bullet killed Bone. They drive over to the hospital, and Pappas is told by an advisor of Santos’s highly decorated background and his wife Elaine before he talks with her. As he offers his services to help her in anyway, Calhoun is told by two men involved in the case that Santos was at the scene with no radio, vest, or back up, breaching department policy big time. On top of that, he was meeting with a convicted drug dealer in Tino. The fishiness continues as Tino was initially headed to Attica on a ten-to-twenty-year sentence but managed to get probation instead. As they talk, Marybeth Cogan (Fonda), a lawyer from the Detectives Endowment Association, shows up to the hospital. She will be representing Santos and his family. Following this, Santos dies.

Back in the limo, Pappas and Calhoun talk about press concerns, with Calhoun setting up details over the phone. Just then, Pappas has the drivers take a detour, going straight to James Bone’s home. He goes inside the house, one filled with many sad civilians, and hugs the father of the kid right away. Later, Pappas and Calhoun get to the press conference. Before Pappas begins, he’s told by an advisor that Judge Walter Stern (Landau), the man responsible for Tino’s probation, is a well-respected judge and if he decided on probation, it had to have been for a good reason. As Pappas does a public speech regarding the shooting, Calhoun meets with Abe Goodman (Paymer) to discuss Tino’s probation report. At first, everything looks fine. Abe establishes that there was a conviction for criminal possession of the fourth degree, which is a probation offense. However, Abe also points out that a supervisor signed the report which seems unnecessary for a “4-C”. Also, what happened to the probation officer’s signature? With these questions in tow, Calhoun and Abe go to meet the supervisor who signed it, Larry Schwartz (Richard Schiff). Larry is fully expecting them to bring up Tino Zapatti, as he’s been fielding phone calls all day about it. He says that when they are overloaded with cases at the office, he’s the guy that takes the “extra-specials”. Calhoun is a bit aggressive with his questioning at first, but Larry passes it off as Calhoun not understanding how busy his job is and how mistakes can happen, giving him some unnecessary aggressiveness right back. Calhoun accepts his response, apologizes, and leaves with Abe.

At the South Brooklyn Democratic Club, Councilman Frank Anselmo (Aiello) meets with an old woman named Gussie who’s about to be evicted for being under-occupied now that her daughter Elaine moved out. Frank calms her down and promises that nothing can happen to her for a myriad of reasons and if the landlord has a problem, he can call him. He cuts the meeting short though, as Larry interrupts to talk. They go to a diner and Larry gets right to the point with Frank, telling him vehemently to get Calhoun off his tail. Since Calhoun backed off too easy earlier, he’s suspecting this to be a part of Calhoun’s plan to go much deeper because his suspicions only grew after their conversation (even though Calhoun acted like he was cool with Larry’s response). Later that night, Calhoun goes to Pappas’s house for dinner, as Pappas is having a lot of higher-up officials as guests. Calhoun schmoozes with everyone and wins them all over. Following dinner and in private, Calhoun tells Pappas that Tino’s bullet is the one that killed the child, not Santos.

Yay (I guess)!

He also mentions how the probation report is front-loaded but signed off on by the honest Judge Stern, so it’s whatever, changing the subject to the fact that he’s meeting Frank for breakfast. Pappas tells him to not piss him off but if he gets a chance, try to get him off his infrastructure plan because it’s unaffordable at the moment. Elsewhere, mafia boss Paul Zapatti receives the newspaper, and his name is in the headline because of Tino’s actions. Furious, he tells his henchman to find Vinnie because he needs to have a talk with him. The next morning, we see on the news that everyone is questioning why Santos was meeting with Tino in the first place and why Judge Stern gave Tino probation. At the wake for Santos, Marybeth greets Elaine to ask if anyone from the police department reached out to her. She said that it was only some guys to tell her Santos’s locker was sealed, so she couldn’t grab anything from it. She did say that the captain came to see her and was very nice. In turn, Marybeth tells her to not talk to anyone from here on out before checking in with her first. At some random diner, Calhoun meets with Frank and his real estate associates for breakfast. As Calhoun lets them in on some basic news the city is dealing with, Frank questions where the Stock Exchange is headed since they’ve threatened to leave, and Calhoun says it’s White Plains. One of Frank’s guys, Lenny, argues this is why they need city land for Bank Exchange (among some other city developments Frank also agrees with). Calhoun reminds them that they’re in no position to build anything because of how badly in debt they are, but Frank argues how it’s necessary.

Otherwise, Bank Exchange will check out and head to New Jersey instead of Brooklyn. Calhoun doubles down, saying that Pappas loves Bank Exchange, but “he can’t afford infrastructure”. A pissed off Frank and all of his associates immediately leave because of Calhoun’s refusal to budge. Elsewhere, Judge Stern is mobbed by the press.

At the office, Calhoun is stopped by Marybeth who accuses him of muddying Santos’s name. In a rush, Calhoun waves her off, but she lets him know that she expects to hear from him by the morning. Calhoun joins Pappas’s advisor meeting already in progress, and they discuss the matters at hand regarding the Tino Zapatti problem. To distract the public and get people jobs, Pappas talks of his plan to build Bank Exchange. He also notes his intention to speak at James Bone’s funeral. After everyone leaves, Calhoun tells Pappas the details of his meeting with Frank. He notes how Frank and his real estate boys wanted the subway stop to increase the value of their land on city property, which is the property around Bank Exchange. If there’s no subway stop, then they don’t get Bank Exchange which as we know, Calhoun said he’s okay with because of the infrastructure issue. Pappas accepts Calhoun’s responses but says they need Bank Exchange, so he’ll have to figure out a way to pull off the subway stop. It’ll take some politicking to do it, but it’s possible. Before Calhoun leaves, Pappas invites him to see the musical Carousel that night because Frank will be there. That night, during the show, Pappas has Frank meet with him. Though they get off to a contentious start in the conversation, Pappas relents and says that the governor’s going to have to agree to a new subway stop, or he won’t support him for re-election. The off-ramp will have to wait until next year though because it’s already factored into his budget. This way, Pappas still gets Bank Exchange, and Frank gets what he wants.

At a restaurant the next day, Frank meets with Paul and Lenny to tell them about the deal. Though Lenny is mad he has to wait longer, they both essentially tell him to deal with it. Next, Paul sends Lenny away so he could talk to Frank privately. Paul tells Frank to get his name out of the news. To do this, he has to plant $40,000 on Santos’s property because it would make him look like a dirty cop, forcing all the attention to go in his direction instead of Paul’s. Frank agrees to it, so Paul leaves the money in an envelope on the table for him. At James Bone’s funeral, Pappas does a speech, despite all of his advisors telling him not too because the citizens aren’t happy with him. After a lively and inspiring monologue of sorts, he is cheered on the way out. Following this, Pappas and Calhoun are talking in the limo again. This time, they discuss Pappas’s trip to Washington for some convention business. Calhoun also mentions that the press is all over Judge Stern and how they should distance themselves from him, but Pappas refuses because of his loyalty to the guy. At Eddie Santos’s funeral service, Calhoun offers condolences to Elaine, but they are immediately interrupted by Marybeth who gives him shit for Pappas not being there. She also questions why a couple of guys from Internal Affairs are at the funeral too. Afterwards, Calhoun gives the angry and reluctant Marybeth a ride to Manhattan. On the way, she convinces him to stop at a diner.

In the parking lot, Calhoun stops playing along and asks who he’s about to meet in there because he knows she set him up. She doesn’t even try to argue it, telling him he’s meeting Albert Holly (Mel Winkler), Santos’s partner from two years ago during the timeframe Tino got probation.

In the diner, Albert says Santos made the case against Tino. It’s the judge’s fault things went south. He says there’s no way Tino would’ve gotten probation “unless interested parties had the judge in their pocket”. Despite Stern’s reputation, “somebody got to him”, and Albert is sure of it. With this in mind, Calhoun goes straight to Judge Stern for answers, directly asking about the Tino Zapatti case, with Stern getting very defensive. He acknowledges he made a mistake, but this is as far as it goes. Something isn’t right about this and Calhoun, along with his reluctant partner in the matter in Marybeth, intend on getting to the bottom of things. To make matters worse, the $40,000 Frank planted at Santos’s summer cottage is found by Internal Affairs, furthering complicating the situation for everyone involved.

My Thoughts

Is it just me, or were you expecting a lot more out of City Hall? Personally, I thought this was going to be a fireball of intrigue, corruption, deception, excitement, passion, and pure intensity. You have to expect this when you have Al Pacino in the lead role, in a position of power no less. All the pieces are there. We got big politician problems in New York, a great mentor/protégé duo in Pacino and John Cusack, a few murders to keep things interesting, and mob involvement. Why wasn’t this better? I wasn’t expecting perfection, but I was expecting something at least close to The Insider in terms of quality.

Sadly, City Hall felt like a major disappointment.

Before the movie gets deep into the mystery behind Tino Zapatti’s death, a lot of the focus in the film revolves around Calhoun, Pappas, and their almost father/son relationship. On paper, the casting makes sense. It starts with Cusack. I liked his drive and the dedication he has as Calhoun. The man lives for his job. As things get deeper, we see him wake up one morning and immediately turn the TV on to see the Tino Zapatti stuff in the news. He stares out the window following a sigh and says, “Good morning” to himself. Calhoun is very much devoted to his career to do this as soon as he wakes up, but it also shows us how his entire life revolves around it. It has to. As we see throughout, this is a constant job that needs someone like him, willing to work every day and night. I also like how confident he is with people. He’s got a swagger to him when he goes places because he knows his opinions and general attitude is backed by the most powerful man in the city. He’s basically untouchable and his unshakable principles scare the shady people he has to talk to. Cusack pulls off this confidence well.

Besides the detective work he decides to involve himself in, there was still a lot left to be desired in his character though. He wasn’t given anything else to do other than the main problem at hand. A romantic angle was not only expected with Bridget Fonda’s Marybeth but needed to add more layers to the story, its character development, and the film’s general entertainment. The convoluted murder plot wasn’t as interesting as we’d like it to be, but it would’ve helped if we liked our characters more and cared about the outcome of everything because of their reactions. Calhoun was solid but because they didn’t give him much to do other than a conversation here and there with the supporting characters, I found myself wanting to see what Pacino was up to more. I wanted to see Pappas and his interactions with these other characters, but he doesn’t really do that. He doesn’t even talk to Marybeth in the film, and Bridget Fonda is billed third. By the way, I do like John Cusack, but his “Louisiana accent” was dogshit. Sometimes he attempts the accent, sometimes he doesn’t, and sometimes, he tries a New York accent. He’s all over the fucking place. He should’ve just played himself. He’s a lot better at it.

There’s a question Calhoun is posed with by a few people and that’s, “Why does he want to play detective?”. Honestly, I don’t know. I understand he has principles of doing the right thing and the probation report seems fishy, but he needed more to sink his teeth into to convince me why he’s going further into this after a couple more murders happen. It’s never explicitly told to us by Calhoun as to why he feels obligated to go this far with his mission, something that could be ignored entirely considering how close he is to the mayor. A simple, “I can’t let this go. This could be really bad”, would’ve went a long way to show us the type of guy he is and what his motivations are, but they never give us the defining moment the character needs for us to get behind him. We don’t see his true colors as a guy who cares until the last twenty minutes of the film. Beforehand, he’s just a guy who seems really interested in this case because everyone else wants to sweep it under the rug. However, I never felt like Calhoun was obligated to go as far as he did because he never seemed like the guy that they were portraying him to be.

Besides the ending, the biggest missed opportunity was the teased romance. Would it have been predictable and expected? Yes, but another angle was needed to make things more dramatically interesting. Calhoun and Marybeth falling for each other in the midst of this all would’ve given this story much needed heat. Unfortunately, Calhoun doesn’t even try to pursue and actually offends her at one point because of his dedication to the mayor’s office. You think it would be resolved so they could get closer, but it basically ends their partnership, and her character becomes pretty forgettable in the long run. By the way, I don’t know if it’s just because I watched Primal Fear recently, but Fonda’s performance felt like a dollar store version of Laura Linney’s Janet Venable, even down to the look. The only way they could’ve saved this Marybeth character (or make her remotely interesting) was to either tease more heat between the two or expand her role in general. Things are only somewhat interesting in the narrative because of the fact someone else got killed. It didn’t have to do with the characters, or the fact that they shouldn’t be friends because of where they stand in their jobs. Ideally, the latter should’ve yielded much more entertaining results than what we got, but this back-and-forth between them was completely underutilized.

As it plays out currently between them, her inclusion feels totally unnecessary.

The mayor of NYC needs to have a big personality on and off the camera. John Pappas is this exactly and if you want a “big personality”, who better to fit this bill than Al Pacino? He’s a genuinely nice guy that cares about the city. Anytime something happens, he feels like it’s his fault. The people believe in him too, as does Calhoun. His ability to rally people with his words is what got him in this position, and he’s done so well that he teases plans on riding his current momentum all the way to the White House. He’s also loyal to the people he knows, an admirable quality of his that I enjoyed. Even with certain friends he has in the news or are causing notable problems, he never backs down to public pressure on account of menschkeit, a Yiddish term to describe honor among men. It becomes such a valuable term to Pappas because it even comes first in the face of the law, as we find out. If I take away anything from this film, it’ll be that term. The way he talks about it, explains it, and even exclaims it was very memorable.

Pappas is a great orator too. It’s a talent of his that he showcases throughout the story. Pacino does an absolutely wonderful job with the script. In terms of the story details however, sometimes I don’t know what they were trying to say. Regarding this, the scene that sticks out the most is Pappas feeling the need to speak at James Bone’s funeral. Does he speak at a loud volume and believes in everything he says to these complete strangers? Yes, this much is clear. However, not only does he say a whole lot of nothing, but he also makes Bone’s entire funeral about himself, trying to rally all of Bone’s family and friends behind him like they need to “rebuild” the city and he needs their help. He even has the audacity to put his hands on the child’s casket and later screams statements he clearly felt were inspirational like, “I choose to fight back! I choose to rise, not fall!”.

I literally wrote in my notes, “What the fuck is he talking about?”.

John Pappas made this poor kid’s entire funeral about John Pappas and his reelection campaign, completely overstepping his boundaries (and he does so on numerous occasions) because he “cares about the city”. Listen, if I was in the same situation as the Bone family, the last person I would want to have speak at my kid’s funeral is a politician that has never met the deceased. What was even more mind boggling is that Bone’s family and friends eat it up and cheer him on the way out! Am I missing something here, or was this outrageously stupid in context? What are we even trying to say here about Pappas? I understand he cares, but this was totally insincere. It screamed “bullshit, attention-seeking politician move” more than anything. This is where the mixed feelings for the film started.

As we all know, when you’re a man in power, in the most powerful city in the country, you may have to do some shady things to make things happen. Considering the NYC setting, having to deal with the mob but also be tough with them, as well as be a believable face of the city, you couldn’t pick a better lead in Al Pacino. The man exudes confidence, believability, and a cult of personality. It’s just that little decisions here and there made me question the film. Usually, I would believe it when a guy like Pappas openly talks about his love for New York and even privately to Calhoun. You can see why Calhoun believes in him too, but I stopped buying into it following the almost comical funeral speech scene. It felt more like he enjoyed being in a position of power and though it’s stressful, he likes the clout. That’s what made the ending so disappointing…

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

SPOILERS

Maybe because I’ve seen Pacino play the eventual bad guy in the mentor role so often (see Two for the Money for a prime example), or I’m used to him flipping out so much, but I was fully expecting an ending where he turns on Calhoun for trying to play good guy detective and for outing his involvement in the Zapatti scandal. However, surprisingly enough, Pappas gets sad and accepts he got caught. What?! This is not Pacino. Where is the classic Pacino “freak out” moment, refusing to back down? This could have led to Calhoun resigning in protest while getting Pappas indicted or something. This would have been much more satisfying than the climax we got that screeched the movie’s momentum to a halt. Granted, the momentum wasn’t very high going into this scene but still. This whole time there was a tease of something bigger about to happen, but it never came. Considering all the murder and mob involvement, it would’ve made sense too. In the middle of the conversation, Pappas asks Calhoun how his father was doing. For a second, I was like “Oh shit! He’s going to the threaten his ass! That’s classic Pacino!”. Weirdly enough, he actually meant it. He brought it up because Calhoun doesn’t talk about his father that much.

Well, that felt like a missed opportunity.

An ending like the one I suggested would’ve saved the movie. Unfortunately, they went right back to Pappas actually being a genuinely nice guy wanting to help the city and just had a few missteps along the way. It was consistent with the character they wrote, but it didn’t feel right at all and took us away from what could’ve been a fiery payoff. It wasn’t the ending this movie was building towards. Once the credits started to roll, it got me thinking: If the character was written like this from the start, maybe Pacino shouldn’t have been the guy to play it, despite how good he did. My expectations were too set in stone with him as the star and when they weren’t met, my overall experience felt flat. Also, why the ending with Calhoun running for city councilman? They do this small scene as a sign of hope for NYC, but through narration, he says he lost. What was the point of this? Maybe they wanted to brighten the mood a bit, but it didn’t fit the vibe of the movie at all.

City Hall has a lot of stuff going for it and a lot of detail in its story that comes to a nice conclusion. However, it’s incredibly unsatisfying and relatively uneventful. Not enough was done to make me care about the characters or the situation, despite the amount of talent in this cast. Though it shows flashes of excitement and interesting plot developments, City Hall underdelivers more often than not.

Fun Fact: Tom Cruise was in preliminary talks to star alongside Pacino, but negotiations fell through.