A hitman for the Russian mafia returns to the neighborhood of his youth in the film "Little Odessa," which will be screened tonight in Loew auditorium.
Set in the Brighton Beach section of New York City's Brooklyn borough, "Little Odessa" features Tim Roth as Joshua Shapira, a man who grew up in this closely-knit community of Russian Jews and who is forced to return there for a hit. Joshua returns despite the fact that he has been banished by the local crime boss and kicked out by his father, brilliantly portrayed by veteran Austrian actor Maximilian Schell.
"Little Odessa" is the feature film debut for writer/director James Gray, a 26-year old native of New York.
Like his protagonist, Gray grew up in a Russian-Jewish neighborhood, though in a conference on America Online, he stated that "my own background is of limited importance because once I make the movie, it's no longer mine, it's yours."
For the debut film of a young director, "Little Odessa" boasts a phenomenal cast.
Joining Tim Roth, who was memorable as Pumpkin in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," are Moira Kelly as the Russian woman drawn to Joshua, Edward Furlong (of "Terminator 2") as Joshua's truant brother, and Vanessa Redgrave as Joshua's dying mother.
Though her character is balding and bed-ridden, Ms. Redgrave provides what has been called an "immense presence that hovers over the entire film."
Shot during New York City's ferocious sixteen-storm winter of '93-'94, the film has a bleak look that separates the community of Little Odessa from the rest of New York and mirrors Joshua's family situation.
Claustrophobia is also induced by the dark and dismal atmosphere of the Shapira apartment. Rented for three weeks from a seventy-seven year-old man and his family, the apartment is an actual residence in Brighton Beach. "It had the smell of death about it already," commented Kevin Thompson, the film's production designer, in The New Yorker magazine.
A powerful force in the film is Schell as Arkady Shapira, Joshua's estranged father. "I always called him Prince Arkady Romanoff," said Schell in a press release. "He feels and behaves as if he's an aristocrat, but he finds himself selling newspapers and cigarettes on the streets of New York. He has a very different illusion about his life to the reality he finds himself living."
The energy that Schell put into Arkady transcended acting in one instance. While filming a scene in which Arkady beats Joshua and orders him out of the house, Schell, on the request of Gray, let himself get carried away and actually physically attacked Roth. A co-producer later commented that the scene looked "fantastic in the dailies."
Tickets for "Little Odessa" are $6 for the general public, $5 with a Dartmouth I.D. at the Loew box office.
