Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Jenni Devyn Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

chaos-rampant I was expecting straight-to-video fodder here the kind you watch stupefied because it happened to be on late at night. It revealed itself to be a taut little thing that tries to create its own world.It was caught in the Tarantino craze so we have small talk about cartoons, movies and music peppered throughout. It has, eventually, a heist in animal masks gone awry that makes poor sense and cookie cutter resolutions where we drive around to settle scores with a bunch of characters that were left hanging so that it's all neat by the end.For a while it manages to strike some spark, most of it in the first half.A man who we understand is trying to be upstanding while everyone around him is fickle, but he has a blind spot for gambling. It's not about the money, for him it seems to be a warped way of measuring himself up against the universe, challenging the fates to pave whatever way they have in store so he can have a mandate to abide by. He makes a mess, owing everyone in town, but won't take the easy way out because a bet is a bet; opportunity for self-worth. So when the fates shuffle the deck and he's dealt the role of hapless stooge who loses everything, he goes through it with stoic persistence to settle debts. Ray Liotta is as good as he was for Scorsese in a similar twitchy role as fates conspire to crush him.It's no Asphalt Jungle where the heist is the ritual that opens us from anxiety to dreamlike visions, but it beats Reservoir Dogs.Noir Meter: 2/4 | Neo-noir or post noir? Neo

seymourblack-1 This superb thriller features an array of colourful characters and some beautiful cinematography which not only looks great but also complements the rather menacing atmosphere of the piece. The action takes place in an environment in which everyone is corrupt and the threat of violence is ever present.Harry Collins (Ray Liotta) is a police detective with a gambling addiction whose work brings him into contact with violent criminals and a group of colleagues who are all thoroughly corrupt and untrustworthy. In amongst all this moral bankruptcy, Harry is something of an exception as he, at least, has some (albeit unorthodox) ethical standards which govern his conduct. His inability to control his compulsion to gamble, however, eventually gets him into a tight spot when his losses increase to $32,000 and local gangster Chicago (Tom Nonnam) wants to be repaid promptly.Harry's desperation grows as he knows he'll be killed if he's unable to pay his debt but then he's presented with two opportunities to resolve his problem. Chicago promises to cancel his debt if he kills a young man called Joey (Giovanni Ribisi) who's in police custody because Chicago fears that he might give the police information about his operations in order to get a lighter sentence. Harry isn't prepared to do what Chicago wants and also refuses an offer from his unscrupulous fellow detective Mike Henshaw (Anthony LaPaglia), who's willing to kill Chicago.In order to extricate himself from the fix he's in, Harry devises a plan to relieve a nightclub owner called Louie (Giancarlo Esposito) of the considerable amount of cash that he knows he regularly keeps in his office safe. Then, with the assistance of three of his colleagues, he goes ahead with the robbery so that he can pay off Chicago and pursue his relationship with the empathetic barmaid Leila (Anjelica Huston) who he thinks provides him with his best opportunity for a better future."Phoenix" has a great soundtrack, some entertaining dialogue and well rounded characters but it's the quality of the acting that's most impressive. Harry Collins is a very troubled and psychologically complex man and Ray Liotta's portrayal of him is extremely powerful. Anthony LaPaglia is tremendous as the completely amoral Henshaw and Anjelica Huston shows the rather resigned manner and cautious nature of someone who carries the emotional scars of the past. The performances of the supporting cast are also strong and make their characters very memorable.

screenman This was one of my (very) lucky dips into the supermarket bran-tub. It was just 50p. But it starred Ray Liotta and Angelica Huston, so it had to be worth a punt. I had never heard of it before.Big surprise. Liotta plays a detective on the skids. He's basically a decent character who is fatally flawed by the vice of gambling. We follow his life as - by turns - it deteriorates into a chaos driven by mounting debt. He has cop colleagues who are even less reliable than himself. Collectively, they present a bitterly amoral face of modern-day policing in Phoenix. This is not a feel-good movie.In crisis, he recruits 3 confidantes to rob a familiar hood, in order to pay off his debts and something to spare. It turns into slaughter. Their senior officer becomes aware of their behaviour but as well as reporting it, decides to cut a slice of the action for himself in a brutal business of corruption, double-cross and murder. There is no happy-ending.The dour characters are set against often gloomy weather and nocturnal activity, enhancing the movie's down-beat texture. Even in the desert sun they are often cast into dark relief by the harsh light.Script is suitably cynical and well-chosen. All the players fit their characters well. Anthony Lapaglia, Daniel Baldwin, Jeremy Piven et al, give excellent returns. There's no bad egg in the carton. Lighting, sound and editing are all up to the job. Four men walking abreast to a common destiny is a very old theme in cinema. We've seen it in 'Gunfight at the OK Corral', 'The Wild Bunch', 'Resevoir Dogs', and probably others.This movie lacks that touch of comic irony that lights up even the grimmest of Tarantino movies, rendering - I think - a greater sense of realism. It's dark and uncompromising; it especially reminds me of 'The Grifters', which also starred Ms Huston. I can't say better than that.This movie is definitely a collectors' item. Highly recommended.

sol ****SPOILERS**** Really off-the-wall movie about police corruption, professional as well as personal, in the Phoenix PD with more double-crosses in the movie then in a cemetery. As your watching the film "Phoenix" your tempted to call your local police precinct and report a crime in progress, the movie, only to put down the phone feeling the police that your calling are the same police in the film.Ray Liotta, Officer Harry Collins, is about the most normal of the bunch of cops focused on in the movie; Officers Mike Henshaw James Nutter Fred Shuster & Let. Clyde Webber, Anthony Lapaglia Daniel Baldwin Jeremy Priven & Xander Berkely. Collins lives by a code that he follows in that being a sick and degenerate gambler he doesn't welsh on a bet that he made, which is the movies main storyline. Collins wants to pay off his lone shark bookie Chicago, Tom Noonan, $32,000.00 that he owes him in betting action and he doesn't want to kill anybody. Which is something that Collins seems to have a lot of trouble keeping from doing in the movie. Besides Chicago there's also Louie,Glancario Esposito, a pimp drug dealer and loan shark, who has Officer Henshaw working for him as a collector and enforcer. Incredibly the cops in "Phoenix" are even worse then the aforementioned gangsters, that's just how bad they are. The police in the movie are made to look so bad that even their boss Let. Webber, Xander Berkley, who at first we see trying to set them up and have them arrested for their crimes is really only interested in ripping them off of their ill gotten gains and keeping them for himself. Collins is always betting in the movie from horses to cards even to cockroaches and raindrops rolling down his car windshield that makes you wonder how he can find time to do his job as a Phoenix policeman? "Phoenix" is so anti-police that it makes you dislike the cops on the screen even if you want to find a reason to like them which it gives you none. Besides being corrupt the cops,Collins Henshaw Nutter &Shuster, are also very stupid as well. They end up wiping themselves out in some of the most ridicules shoot-outs that I've ever seen in a cop movie. There's a rip-off of Louie's joint later in the film to get his weekly, or was it monthly , take of some $250,000.00 that was so funny as well as bloody and brutal that it looked like a scene out of a Marks Brothers comedy. Anjelica Huston & Brittany Murphy as Leila and her daughter Veronica were totally wasted in the film and I have the feeling that they had much bigger parts in the movie but most of their scenes were left on the cutting room floor, lucky for them. Ray Liotta was at his best playing the sick and unstable Officer Collins which seen to be the kinds of roles that he been playing in movies over the last ten years or so. The cops in the movie were co corrupt and horrid in their actions that they made the corrupt cops in the film "Serpico" look like boy scouts stealing cookies from girl scouts. In one real nauseating episode Officer Henshaw has the terrified wife, Sibel Ergener, of Carl, Murphy Dunne, put out for him as her helpless husband is handcuffed to a pipe in their home. The next day Carl kills himself and Henshaw on the scene with Carl's wife present calmly puts his finger to his mouth as if to tell her to shut her mouth about what happened between him and her and Carl if she knows what's good for her. The most sympathetic cop in the movie, next to Collins, Officer Shuster had his wife Katie, Kari Wuhrer,having affairs with almost all the cops in the precinct, except Shuster's partner Collins. Still Shuster thought that Collins was also involved with Katie and sets his partner together with Henshaw and Nutter up to get caught by Let. Webber; who unknown to Shuster is also having an affair with Katie. Let. Webber was only interested in getting the $250,000.00 that the corrupt cops ripped off from Louie and after getting his hands on the cash shot both Shuster who died and Collins who survived and got away. Collins ends the movie by killing Chicago and his mobsters for murdering a witness who Collins refused to kill! Thats because killing is not what Officer Collins is all about! that makes a lot of sense doesn't it? Anjelica Huston in the small part that she had in the movie was about the most positive person in the film. That doesn't say much were everyone in it, the cops and gangsters, were about as sympathetic as Charles "Sweet Charlie" Manson.