The Badfellas
What starts off promisingly enough heads for a rapid decline in quality when director Luc Besson doesn’t quite know what to do with the impressive cast he has assembled.
The Family
Director: Luc Besson Writers: Luc Besson, Michael Caleo, Tonino Benacquista Starring: Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones, Dianna Agron, John D’Leo Runtime: 111 minutes Certification: 15
What starts off promisingly enough heads for a rapid decline in quality when director Luc Besson doesn’t quite know what to do with the impressive cast he has assembled. Whatever it wants to achieve, whether that is comedy, family drama, or invoking some kind of nostalgia, it fails on all counts, and without any decent action to make any of this worthwhile, Besson’s newest marks a disappointing low for the French director. That the film’s executive producer is Martin Scorsese doesn’t appear to have added much to the finished product. Mafia boss Giovanni Manzoni (Robert De Niro), along with his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) and two children (Dianna Agron, John D’Leo) are relocated to Normandy, France as a part of the witness protection programme after he rats out a powerful enemy. They have been on the run for six years now, and FBI agent Robert Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones) tasked with keeping the family safe is quite frankly sick of having to move them around so much. “Try to fit in, I’m getting tired of finding you a new place to live every 90 days” he says, and the newly named Blake family promise to behave themselves. That is until the father beats up a plumber who is trying to rip him off, the mother blows up a local grocery store after getting insulted by snooty French people, the daughter attacks a sleazy boy with a tennis racquet, and the son starts running a mini-Mafia ring at his school. Sound fun? It really isn’t. Aside from a few seconds of actual narrative flair that signals some kind of direction or purpose, the film comes to an awful standstill where characters mope around whilst trying to adjust to their new lives. There is the inevitable showdown that must occur between the “Blakes” and the wronged bad guys who are on the hunt for the traitors, but at a staggering 111-minute running time, you wonder whether the Mafia could hurry up and get on with tracking people down. How do the Blakes pass their time in the meantime? Fred (De Niro) starts writing a book – a memoir of some sorts that he thinks will be a good idea given his criminal past. The FBI agent wisely advises against this, but to no avail. When Fred finds an old typewriter, he’s an unstoppable literary machine. Maggie (Pfeiffer) invites people around for a barbecue, is a cooking queen, and finds peace by going to church. She confesses her sins to a priest. The priest is horrified and tells her never to come back. What these supposed sins are the audience never finds out, since that actual confession itself is never shown. Belle (Agron) is about to experience what it’s like to fall in love with the wrong man: a teacher. For someone her age, she’s very misguided and frustratingly immature when it comes to relationships, which marks the weakest subplot of the lot. Warren (D’Leo) doesn’t really get up to much, although he does play a significant part in the film’s most outrageous strand that outlines the steps by which the antagonists finally manage to track this family down. Despite the cool, relaxed demeanour of De Niro, and the feisty energy from Pfeiffer, The Family is a disappointingly dull feature that mistakes portraying utter empty boredom with inducing nostalgia. Is this a black comedy? A family drama? It’s neither.
