THE YARDS

D: James Gray; with Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, James Caan, Faye Dunaway, Ellen Burstyn, Charlize Theron.

Remnants of Goodfellas linger in James Gray’s gritty family crime saga The Yards, though comparisons to Sidney Lumet’s underrated Night Falls on Manhattan are more apt for this wobbly tale of inner-city corruption and its effects on family. Cast and crew score points for infusing a preposterous plot with nuance and understatement where one would normally expect high drama, but the film as a whole never manages to add up to the sum of its parts. Gray’s intermittently fascinating character study begins with an amusing scene in which Burstyn announces that “nothing but good times are ahead” — just moments after her son (Wahlberg) returns from a prison stay and the film quickly dissolves into a rote melodrama concerning a railyard scam gone awry. Gray drops the ball by placing an already stale story in the hands of Wahlberg and Phoenix, who mope through their scenes employing exactly one facial expression between them. The supporting cast is uniformly fine, however, and Wahlberg and Theron generate a few sparks with a taboo-busting subplot, but therein lies the problem with The Yards: Sparks are fine, but a film that places Burstyn, Dunaway, and Caan at the same dinner table ought to be a real scorcher.

This article appears in October 20 • 2000.

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