A professional thief signs on to a heist. While he knows two of the other people involved, he does not know the driver, who has been brought in by one of the other two. The heist goes down without a hitch, but when the time comes to divide the take, the driver kills two of his partners. The professional thief escapes and hides in the brush while the driver torches the hideout. After making his escape, the professional thief starts out on a mission to reclaim the take.
City of Industry has a plot which seems directly inspired by The Sour Lemon Score. Harvey Keitel plays Roy Egan, the Parker figure, and Stephen Dorff plays Skip Kovich, the George Uhl figure. Unfortunately for the viewer, City of Industry may be inspired by a Parker novel, but it certainly isn’t inspired. At 97 minutes, it still seems too long, perhaps because Harvey Keitel running around hunting Stephen Dorff doesn’t really generate any suspense and Keitel’s technique for ferreting information is to simply find someone with some association with Dorff, beat the crap of him, and move on to the next person. Perhaps a better director could have made this interesting, but I doubt it.
Keitel’s Parker figure isn’t very Parker-like, either. He’s a pretty nice guy who helps out his friend’s widow and gets very emotional when his friends get popped.
Back to Not Quite Parker – Screen
Recent Comments