The second directing effort of playwright and scenarist David Mamet, after the auspicious House of Games, is no disappointment, or only the mildest kind. Any hint of that feeling is probably attributable to the seeming increase in conventionality: an old Chicago shoeshine man (the dolorous Don Ameche), based on a physical resemblance to a Mafia hit man, is bribed to take the rap for him; an out-of-favor, literally "on-probation," underling (Joe Mantegna, wisely retained from House of Games) is assigned to baby-sit him over the weekend before his day in court, and goes outside his proper sphere of authority by taking the old man on a last fling to a mob-run casino in Tahoe. Way, way outside it. (We can see immediately, with no explanations needed, and in spite of the man's bland manner, how he might have got on probation in the first place.) The developments have all the earmarks of farce, but it's farce stiffened and sobered. And Mamet's visual style once again seems to aspire to the explicit accolade of a mob tailor: "Clean but not austere" -- although there's some austerity in Mamet, too. Some of the jokes admittedly fall flat, but, as levelly as the whole is purposely played, they don't fall all that far. The surface remains unruffled. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd
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