Alicia I love this movie so much

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Aspen Orson There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

ElMaruecan82 Ever since Frank Capra and "The Godfather" movies, Cinema had shattered faith on American politicians and I guess, reality finished the job. And given the requirements of the political thriller genre, dissociating the word 'politician' from the epithet 'crooked' became unconceivable, and Harold Becker's "City Hall" is no exception: the script co-written by three giants: Bo Goldman, Nicholas Pileggi and Paul Schradder, depicts politicians as puppets with money as the strings held by criminals.The games had its rules and one of them was to never harm, let alone, kill, innocent people. In "Scarface", Tony Montana owed his demise to this principle and Eliott Ness couldn't overlook the explosion that killed a poor little girl in "The Untouchables". "City Hall" opens with an off-duty cop and an in-probation criminal linked to the mob, meeting on a rainy day and shooting at each other. Nothing we're not familiar with, but then there's a stray bullet that takes the film to an unexpected direction, killing a 6-year little boy going to school with his father.When a bullet kills a child, the community can't close eyes. We know the bullet hasn't finished its trajectory and many other heads will follow. The film is basically about the aftermath of the triple-murder, a thrilling investigation and its political domino-effect. What makes it even more riveting relies on the character who desperately tries to reassemble the pieces of the puzzle: Kevin Calhoun, John Cusack in his 'boyish look' days, as the deputy of an ambitious and charismatic lawyer named John Pappas, played by a Pacino at the top of his game (sometimes over it). Calhoun asks a friend about the killer's probation and what follows is a great piece of dialog. David Paymer's character looks confused. "Isn't the document kosher enough?" "No, it's too kosher." We get the message.In other words, the Judge let a gangster free while he deserved to be sentenced for jail for more than 10 years. And the 'signal' alert starts ringing when Calhoun discovers that the judge happens to be a friend of John Pappas. Calhoun tries to protect his mentor, little he knows that Pappas will also be revealed as the mastermind of the whole operation. Mastermind is a bit too much; in fact, this is a benign case of political corruption. Then Mobster Zappati wants to spare his nephew a 15-year sentence, he orders his friend, a Brooklyn mayor, named Anselmo, played by a great Danny Aiello to 'persuade the judge', a good friend of John Pappas, which loops the loop. Meanwhile, Anselmo orders to hide 40 000 dollars in the cop's home to imply that he wasn't that clean. Really small potatoes, we've seen worse.But all of these actions are aggravated by the dramatic turn it took, when a lamb was sacrificed at the altar of political corruption. But more dramatic, even tragic, is the unforgivable turn the film takes as it deliberately screws up the mechanism it confidently built up. It all starts with Bridget Fonda's character as the lawyer representing the cop's widow and struggling to clear her husband's name, in order to get a full pension … well, if it wasn't meant to be a sort of 'romantic' subplot, why a beautiful blonde for that? And this is where the film starts to lose its beat, because there's nothing she brought up that Calhoun couldn't have discovered alone. The whole ride to 'buffalo' was just the set-up to a cringe-worthy ending that didn't even make sense in the first place.Basically, Fonda is the film's first mistake, and the poster could have done without her. There was so many great moments, a reunion between Anselmo and his business partners, his last conversation with Zapatti which had the same powerful undertones as the unforgettable meeting between Tom Hagen and Frankie Pentangeli in "The Godfather Part II". The film even has the intelligence to spare us some random action scenes, it's all in the mystery surrounding the opening crime, it's one hell of a political whodunit, meaning: who committed the first mistake? And the only character for the film is Calhoun, whose arc will change from idealism to an awareness of the limitation of the political world. If anything, the film had to conclude on a sad and melancholic note.Instead, we have that upbeat tone at the end, where he campaigns for some candidature I didn't even care about and an exchange of a few wisecracks with Bridget Fonda. That 'bullet killing a child' was the plot device that belonged to "City Hall" and no other film could have used it instead. Imagine the conversation, you know "City Hall"? "City what"? The film where a kid gets killed during a shoot-out and Pacino makes a speech during his funeral." "Yeah, I that movie, so … how about it?" "Well, it could have been much better." Unfortunately, the film is so thought-provoking and subversive that some other parts simply didn't work, the ending, Bridget Fonda, and the fact that we're left confused about the future of John Pappas.It's incredible that a screenplay written by the authors of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'", "Scent of a Woman", "Goodfellas", "Casino", "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" couldn't come up with a more explosive material. A disappointing collective work, for a film with a very promising concept, a stellar cast, but the conclusion of an ordinary TV movie. That 'bullet killing a child' deserved more. When you have such an original opening, you can't afford such a cheap and ordinary ending, much more one that doesn't even ring true : in other words, this was a man's film.Indeed, it could have been to political thrillers what "Heat" was to the gangster genre, it could have been even longer, what a waste of performances, especially Aiello who was astonishing.

kai ringler living in jersey for over 10 years and visiting n y c , i am very fond of this film,, John Cusack knocks the ball out of the park with this one, possibly his greatest work,, save for the Jack Bull. a little boy get's killed by in a shootout between a dirty cop and a gangster, john plays the deputy mayor,, brigette fonda is excellent in this film as well playing opposite john,, Al Pacino plays the Mayor of the great city of New York City who buy the way is also trying to get the Democratic National Convention to come there instead of Miami, so there is a lot of political wheeling and dealing there,, this film is a fascinating look at political life in the big city, and what happens between gangsters and politicians..

jzappa Working from a script written in part by Nicholas Pileggi, best known for writing the book Wiseguy, which he adapted into the movie Goodfellas, and for writing the book and screenplay Casino, director Harold Becker shows how connected circles scratch each other's backs, even in the command of a comparatively honorable mayor like Pappas, who is regarded as a presidential prospect. As Cusack follows the paper trail of the dead mobster's probation report, his skepticism is agitated. How did this violent young man get probation rather than a jail sentence? We meet the other players in the plot, not the least of which is Danny Aiello, the political boss of Brooklyn, and Tony Franciosa, the Mafia boss whose nephew was shot dead. How and why these people are d I leave to the movie to divulge, though there are never any misgivings that they are.The narrative is told generally through the eyes of the Cusack character, a visionary from Louisiana who ires his boss and hopes to learn from him. Much is made by everyone of bureaucratic knowledge ed down through the generations. Some of the dialogue is ungracefully erudite, but considering I just described the building blocks of the story as bureaucratic knowledge, one can't say it doesn't work. The shooting case builds against the seasoning of two other issues on the mayor's desk: a charge by Aiello for a subway stop and an off-ramp in Brooklyn to aid a new banking center, and the city's bid for the next Democratic convention. Individual idiosyncrasies are also explored, including Aiello's emotional bond with the music of Rogers and Hammerstein.Much also is made of menschkeit, a Yiddish expression, which, Pappas explains to his deputy, is about the bond of honor between two men, about what happens between the two hands in a handshake. This connection doesn't mean much to Bridget Fonda, the lawyer for the policeman's association who defends the dead cop's honor and fights for his widow's pension even as incriminating evidence appears. Little by little, the deputy mayor comes to grasp that menschkeit is such an influential notion that it outclasses he law.There are various scenes of hard impact, including one where the Brooklyn boss comes home for lunch in the middle of the day, his wife asserts her interest through the medium of the dish she has cooked, and then the Mafia boss drops in by surprise. There is also a compelling, and markedly conjectural, late scene between the mayor and his deputy.One scene handled with delicacy is comprised of the mayor's decision to speak at the funeral of the slain child, in a Harlem church. His advisers tell him he won't be wanted there. But he goes anyway, and cranks himself up for a spiel of unabashed hyperbole, Pacino and his character both.It gets an impressive reaction from the congregation, but the mayor knows, and his deputy knows, that it was artificial, and the way they scrupulously evade discussing it, in the limousine taking them away, is a subtle employment of composure and innuendo. This is a script that knows it has to supply Pacino with the reason why most of his fans go to see him, and immediately follows its quota with the reality that silence has much more inherent meaning than speech.Pacino and Cusack are convincing together throughout the movie, the older man unbreakable and aware, the younger one anxious to learn, but with ideals that don't sway. Pacino is innate with his down-to-earth capacity to marry common sense and inventive imagination, inspired flair and matter-of-fact realism. Cusack moves very freely in spite of his dark defensiveness.The Bridget Fonda subplot development is unnecessary, but it is a result of veteran screenwriter Paul Schrader's otherwise shrewdly perceptive belief in the worth of every character, and each is fleshed into earnest embodiments. Aiello, for instance, is a highlight because he evokes his character's joie de vivre and sensitivity to his environment.

sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** When undercover Brooklyn North Det. Eddie Santos, Nestor Serrano,was to meet his drug supplier Tito Zapatti, Larry Romano, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in a buy and bust operation, with Tito being the one who gets busted, that things went haywire with both Det. Santos and Tito ending up getting shot and killed by each other. During the deadly shootout an innocent bystander six year-old James Bone Jr.,Jaliyl Lynn,was also killed in the cross-fire.With New York City slated to host the 1996 Democratic Presidential Convention that summer that last thing that the city's flamboyant Mayor Pappas, Al Pacino, wanted was a possible riot over young James Bones tragic death by a possible, in was later determined that it was a bullet from Tito's gun that killed young James, member of the New York City Police Department.What was far more shocking then even Bone's death is that his killer Tito Zapatti was given probation by the well respected NY State Judge Walter Stern, Martin Landau. When he should have been put behind bars for 10 to 20 years by being arrested with a kilo of cocaine in the backseat of his car! It soon became evident that the person who got Judge Stern his job, for a $50,000.00 payoff, was non other the Brooklyn political boss Frank Anselmo, Danny Aiello. It's Anselmo who's involved with Mayor Pappas in a land deal, involving the New York Subway System, that would bring him and his real estate friends tens of millions of dollars over the next two years! It would also indirectly connect Mayor Pappas in the Bone killing by connecting him to Judge Stern, who made it possible for Tito be be free, who's a mutual friend of both him and his Gomba, or Landsman, Frank Anselmo!To keep all this from blowing up the late Det. Santons is framed, by working undercover without the authority from his superiors, in the Bone shooting. In fact those framing Santos go as far and hiding some $40,000.00 in cash in his upstate summer home making it look like he was being paid off by Tito's uncle Mafia boss Paul Zapatti, Anthony Francoisa, for letting his nephew deal drugs with him getting a piece of the action. Which may well explain him, as well as Tito, getting shot by Tito welshing on his paying Santos off!As things turn out it's Mayor Pappas' deputy in City Hall Kevin Calhoun, John Cusack, who ends up messing everything up for his boss by being too honest in finding who was responsible in covering up Tito's criminal record that allowed him to be out on the streets. The facts that Kevin uncovered lead straight to Frank Anselmo, a major political er of Mayor Pappas, who as it turned out was connected by the hip to Tito's Mafia chieftain Uncle Paul!A bit over-plotted "City Hall" does show how big city corruption can filter up, as well as down, to everyone in city government without them, like Mayor Pappas, even knowing about it. Mayor Pappas biggest sin was that he was friends with Brooklyn Boss Anselmo who was putting people into jobs, like Judge Stern, who were subjected to being blackmailed from Anselmo's real boss Mafioso Paul Zapatti.***SPOILERS*** It only took a deadly shootout in Williamsburg to set everything into motion not by only Tito, besides Det. Santos and James Bone, being killed but why he was allowed to be out on the street in order to bring the very popular New York City Mayor down. Mayor Pappas was looking forward to much bigger things, like Governor or even President, in his future political pursuits. As it turned out his top deputy Kevin Calhoun in not looking the other way was responsible for his demise. As well as that of the Mayor's good friend Frank Anselmo and the person whom he helped put on the bench, as a state judge, Judge Stern. Who's decision in letting Tito Zapatti off made this whole disaster, which resulted in at least a half dozen murders and one suicide, possible!