![]() ![]() Manny is a mob boss with a bark much bigger than his bite, looking to make his presence felt at all times, and his attempt to take Santo under his wing rings hollow for the majority of their confrontations and debates. In many ways he’s a small man standing on the shoulders of others in order to feel tall, and it’s in those moments where he’s most interesting, but when posturing or playing the role with a tired smugness, Sorvino loses his audience. There is something innately intriguing about the Benny type, the sleazy figure on the sidelines who constantly acts as the catalyst of action in the film. “The Brooklyn Banker” takes every Italian mob characteristic from classic gangster films and funnels them into the forms of Benny and Manny, to both the film’s fleeting success and detriment. Like a daytime soap, it is always a little bit comforting seeing such familiar archetypes onscreen all at once. As one of the few of his childhood friends who managed to make a honest living despite their upbringing, Santo is initially perturbed by the notion, finding ways to evade it until the pressure from Benny forces his hand into attending the meeting, where things, as is often the case with stories of downfalls and corruption, quickly start to fall apart. His day to day life with his wife ( Elizabeth Masucci) and two daughters doing clean and honest work is upturned when his father-in-law, Benny ( Paul Sorvino), puts him on the radar of a local mob boss, Manny ( David Proval of “ Mean Streets”), by running his mouth about his son-in-law being a math wiz. Santo (played with ample charisma by Troy Garity) is a good man working as the vice president of a bank who is gifted with a knack for memorizing numbers. All of the style it draws from its ‘70s setting vanishes after the opening salvo. There’s something admirably goofy about “ The Brooklyn Banker,” a new film directed by Federico Castelluccio based on the short, “ Lily of the Feast.” Unfortunately for Castelluccio, his debut is a film that revels in the trappings and tropes of old gangster films, but without much substance.
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