Green Bay Press-Gazette from Green Bay, Wisconsin • Page 44

D-4 LIFESTYLE Thursday, October 4, 1990 Green Bay Press-Gazette 'ammmmmmmiltmmammmmma 'State of Grace' is good mob flick with Irish twist MIGHTY OAK SALE 1 SAVE 30 TO 50 Save hundreds of dollars on Wisconsins best selection of Oak Furniture's, Dining Sets, Wall Systems, Desks, Entertainment Centers and Bedrooms -everything including Custom orders is reduced, mm nil SI SI 1 mm. Movie review State of One Starts Friday at ttie Stadium Cinema in Ashwau-benon. Rated with very strong violence, profanity. Sean Penn, Ed Harris, Gary Oldman. Director Phil Joanou.

125 mlna. Excellent, Good, Fair; It Poor ouiV'm1 4m 11' By Jack Garner Gannett News Service Phil Joanou's State of Grace ia a gangland thriller with an Irish twist. Sean Penn, Ed Harris, and Gary Oldman star in this violent urban drama, loosely based on the notorious exploits of the Westies, the Irish-American gang of Hell's Kitchen on Manhattan's west side. In a season inundated with mob movies, State of Grace stands out mostly for its ethnic locales outside the Italian-American world in which ambitious and proud, and determined to live by the warped code of the underworld, even if he must destroy his family to align himself with The Family. He loves his wild brother, but also is well aware he's a liability.

As portrayed by Harris, Frankie is evil and scary. State of Grace is a step forward into major drama for Phil Joanou, a director whose previous work has been limited to Three O'Clock High and the music documentary, U2 Rattle and Hum. His touch with actors and setting is sure, and his style is gritty and energetic. He missteps badly at the end, with an easy out a bloody shoot-out, photographed in cliched, slow-motion. III mVD- New York Irishman is perfect.

Penn balances the frustrations and the guilt he feels as an undercover cop with a quiet maturity, saving his eruptions of emotion for pivotal momenta. The most subtle and complex portrayal in State of Grace, though, is Ed Harris's portrait of mob boss Frankie Flannery. He's III "Cf 1 III Aiii MW .7 CJH underworld movies are typically set. However, the story is quite familiar to fans of the Godfather films, but on a much smaller scale. For State of ft i a ntHj' ii I MONTESSORI CHILDREN'S WORLD Penn Shelf St Dining HI mmm 30 Day Money Back Guarantee -A.

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Grace demonstrates the decline and fall a family obsessed with crime and power. Sean Penn stars as Terry Noonan, a young man who returns to the Manhattan neighborhood of his childhood, and reunites with his friend, the fun-loving but erratic Jackie Flannery (Gary Oldman). Jackie's plder brother, Frankie Flannery (Ed Harris), is the cold, calculating leader of a gang of Irish mobsters, and Terry joins Jackie as a member of Frankie's gang. It soon becomes clear, though, that Terry is an undercover cop. But he's torn between his duty and his affection for Jackie, and soon finds himself in the middle of squabble between brothers.

Frankie is attempting to align himself with a major Mafia leader, and Jackie consistently foils the ms 0D (Hess mm oss (mm QSGCs Q3? GUI? (332? feE? (JI833 SBiCSBQD ffiSGIEfl a a A A A vVV ON THESE TITLES Acclaim Orlg. CYPERNOID 39.99 Acclaim EARTH STAR 37.99 Acclaim KNIGHT RIDER 44.99 AM Sammy AMAGON 37.99 AM Sammy SILK WORM 44.99 Bandai Orlg. SHOOTING RANGE .34.99 Bandai DIG DUG 2 37.99 Cullura Brain KUNG FU HEROES ....44.99 Data East OASH GALAXY 29.99 UN BACK TO THE FUTURE 44.99 Nenolt Orlg. CASTLE QUEST 42.99 Sun Soft BLASTER MASTER 37.99 OPERATION WOLFE .42.99 Tailo SKY SHARK 39.99 Tailo TARGET RENEGADE 42.99 Hurry, quantities limited. All titles may not be available in all stores.

plans through his rebellious, hotheaded behavior. State of Grace is more appealing as a character study, and for its unusual ethnic qualities, than for its somewhat-muddled plot. Terry's goals as an undercover cop are never detailed, and his behavior in that guise is often questionable, at best. More important, it's hard to determine what he sees in the nearly psychotic Jackie Flannery. It's a major flaw, because it's the key to understanding Terry's dilemma.

All three lead performances are fascinating, however, though Gary Oldman's outrageous theatrics nearly surpass the eccentricities required to play Jackie. Oldman is so unrestrained and uninhibited, he makes the usually mercurial Sean Penn seem positively demure. However, Englishman Oldman once again demonstrates a most impressive ear for accents; his blue-collar Lynch company using cliches, finding quality By Mike Hughes Gannett News Service What is it about David Lynch's new company, anyway? The latest arrival, Beverly Hills 90210, which premieres at 7:30 p.m. today on Fox (Channel 32 locally), takes the usual teen cliches, mixes them in a glitzy pot and emerges with quality. But that's followed by Salute Your Shorts, at 5:30 p.m.

Saturday on cable's Nickelodeon. It takes summer-camp cliches and emerges with glop and goo. Both are from Propaganda Films, the company run by Lynch and Mark Frost. So is American Chronicle, at 8:30 p.m. Saturdays on Fox.

And so is Twin Peaks. If there is a trend here, it's non-trendiness. Let's review the new show, plus two Thursday arrivals on PBS' Showcase Week: As she walks into her new high school, the teen is awed. "Everyone here looks like they just stepped out of a music video." This is Beverly Hills High School almost where kids take a quantum leap into culture shock, meeting the usual cliches along the way. The pilot film of Beverly Hills 90210 is stuffed with the characters from all teen dramas.

And the dIoU are iust as familiar. It was 10,000 years ago that a Middle-eastern culture ran out of fuel. The people loved using plaster. But the process involved fires that required more and more trees. Eventually, the plaster was of low quality, the fires were fueled by dung, and the civilization died.

That story is told in Race to Save the Planet, at 8 p.m. on PBS (Channel 38). Thoughtful and well-researched, it also sets the tone for the full series, which arrives at 9 p.m. Sunday Hercule Poirot, the meticulous Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie and superbly played by David Suchet, returns to the Mystery series, at 9 p.m. He's mostly a bystander this time, but that's OK.

The story is beautifully crafted and the performances are perfect, as usual. Poirot would Ixpect no less. Matchbox SUPERFAST MACHINE TRACK Fisher-Price MAGIC MANSION Fisher-Price UMBRELLA Orlg. 9.99 Prig. 59.99 i wxntrm i ENTER t-isner-mce MAGIC SCAN CHECKOUT Prig.

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