City Island

Charming, lighthearted movie. Andy Garcia plays Vince Rizzo, the weary patriarch of a Bronx family – well, it’s not the Bronx, exactly, but City Island, a little strip of beachfront connected to the Bronx by an old fashioned bridge. Vince is proud of his roots in this little plot of urban land, living with his wife and family in the house his grandfather built, but the picturesque setting is about all that’s pretty here – the Rizzo family is a dissembling mess. Vince is a correctional officer, working in a prison, but he wants to be an actor, so he takes classes on the sly; wife Joyce (Julianna Margulies) is certain he’s having an affair. His college daughter Vivian (Dominik García-Lorido) is working in a strip joint and only pretending to go to school, and Vince Jr. (Ezra Miller) has a fondness for very unusual adult websites. They all manage to get along, uneasily, until Vince has an epiphany at acting class, and decides to invite a prison inmate into their home to finish up his sentence as a “guest’ of the Rizzo family; Vince claims he just wants to the kid to help him build a bathroom, but he’s hiding the truth: Tony Nardello (Steven Strait) is Vince’s son from an old relationship.

And that is one secret too many. Tony is naturally curious about why Vince has taken an interest in him and he easily senses that there is a lot of stuff not being said around the family dinner table. Not afraid to pry, the young stranger stumbles on one secret after another, stirring up an entertaining whirlwind of revelations.

There’s nothing serious going on in this movie; even though it seems to be tackling important family issues, nothing particularly profound gets said, we’re here for fun, not to learn a lesson. Still there is something very intimate about the way the story gets told, the characters are familiar, like old acquaintances or neighbors, and by the end you kind of want to join them for a beer. Andy Garcia turns in a solid performance as Vince; his movie audition scene is worth the price of admission. And Steven Strait, as Vince’s felonious son, is a bright light in every one of his scenes. Emily Mortimer also charms as Vince's encouraging actor friend.  City Island had a slow start at the box office but it hung on, got some good word of mouth and is playing in theaters all over the country. Check it out if you’re looking for a lighthearted night out.  B