Homicide

National Review, Nov 4, 1991 by John Simon

* David Mamet's ego has for some time now been boundless; with his latest, Homicide, it miraculously manages to get bigger. Mamet's third written-and-directed cinematic opus is an attempt to crossbreed the policier or film noir (blacks are numerous in it) with a study of anti-Semitism in the Chicago Police Department (and beyond), and how it affects Bobby Gold, a tough cop who has abdicated his Jewishness in the pursuit of acceptance by the force-traded, as it were, the star of David for the shield of the PD.

Bobby, like his partner, Tim Sullivan, is maniacally eager to bring in Randolph, a black drug pusher and killer, when, in a meeting, a black superior berates him and calls him a kike, whereupon the loyal Tim hurls commensurate racial slurs back at the superior. Bringing in Randolph now becomes even more a point of honor and obsession. But Bobby gets accidentally sucked into another case, the murder of an old Jewish woman who runs a pawnbroker's shop in a sleazy part of town. It turns out that the victim belonged to a rich and powerful Jewish family, and had been, on top of that, part of a gun-running operation for the Jews of Palestine in 1946. Her family, revealed as belonging to an even more powerful and mysterious organization, wants to keep Gold, a rare Jewish cop on an Irish-tinged police force, on the job, which Bobby, who at first doesn't even believe in the alleged greater implications of the case, bitterly resents. He wants Randolph.

But as the family and other Jews play on his racial conscience, and as the ramifications do prove greater, Bobby becomes absorbed in the no longer piddling case and ends up neglecting the key role he is supposed to play in the capture of Randolph, with disastrous consequences for his partner. By trying to save his soul, Bobby ends up losing it. This is a rather grand, cosmically cynical proposition, which the trivial story, for all its posturing, cannot begin to sustain.

Moreover, Mamet purports to be in the know about recondite things without knowing what he is talking about. Thus a great deal is made of the title Grofaz, which the film presents as one of Hitler's honorifics, under which name Adolf is shown on a recruiting poster. This acronym for Grosster Fuhrer aller Zeiten (Greatest Leader of all Time) is here surrounded by much solemn mumbo-jumbo, even though Grofaz was actually a term of derision, used sneeringly by Jews and other anti-Nazis. The film, by the way, skips the umlaut on the 0, enabling Mamet to end the story with a cheap play on words, which he evidently perceives as an anticlimax fraught with shuddering significance.

More absurd yet is the Jewish secret society that Mamet introduces into the movie: a militant group that keeps changing its hiding place; meant to be both noble and menacing, it emerges faintly ludicrous. As a German colleague observed, this is the heroic version of the ghoulish Elders of Zion, long the most venomous and widespread fabrication of rabid anti-Semitism, here elevated in much the same manner as Grofaz. There are also minor absurdities, such as Bobby's inability to get his torn holster repaired or replaced, and his repeated dropping and eventual loss of his gun in the midst of a life-threatening crisis.

Furthermore, Mamet's directorial style displays a certain exaggeration of police procedure, a romantic heightening of explosiveness that does not look entirely unlike a game of cops and robbers played by bigger, wealthier, and better outfitted children. On the other hand, Mamet does know how to evoke a both jocular and overheated station-house atmosphere, and does hire an able cinematographer such as Roger Deakins to get just the right hues and shadings, as well as the savvy composer Aleric Jans for the proper, sparing amount of music. And, as usual, he obtains impressive performances from his entire cast, with Joe Mantegna a magnificent, finely textured Bobby, his every emotional nuance subtly registered without interrupting the sweep of the performance.

But I am getting ever wearier of Mamet's trademark, the stylized dialogue halfway between a profane litany and a bad case of echolalia. In the end, the film falls completely apart as lose ends and shaggy dogs, predominate, with cause and effect, seemingly embroiled in an acrimonious divorce, definitively parting company.