I'm surprised at the relatively low rating of this outstanding comic drama. Very few films nowadays make me laugh out loud as this one did, in more than one place. I laughed not as you might expect at the antics of the great Christopher Walken but at the deft plots turns which make this film stand among others of its type, that being, a decadent father being reconciled with an angry son. This film, in my opinion, deserves to be listed among the most successful comedies of the past decade, and of course I say "comedy" in the original sense of a serious story -- that could have been a tragedy -- with a redemptive ending. Alessandro Nivola, whose face I have seen often but whose name I had not remembered, is a wonderful actor who I now will follow more closely. He has a broad range and moves naturally across the spectrum of emotions appropriate to this narrative. He's handsome, of course, but both director and actor made sure his good looks don't appear out of place in a "road movie" about two "failed" men.
Review of $5 a Day
