The constant of sad eyes, in which the honor and greatness of the years lived Chicago is a city, skyscrapers challenging the sky, a crossroads of black and white cultures, Irish and Indian. It is also a symbol of American gangsterism, nurtured by immigrant ambitions, bootlegging and Capone myths. Here, on a typical street in a small bench, the mustachioed shoe cleaner Gino is aging and working. Judging by the sad eyes and working hands, life did not pamper the old man, and the most vivid memory hardly went beyond the confines of the chamber in which he serves dozens of pairs of legs a day. In his old age, fate gave him a chance - an offer to go to prison for money, which should not have been refused. And the evil thing is that you had to hit the hands of a gang boss.
Chicago is a city of exhaust-emitting pipes of countless factories, a haven for giant liners descending on Lake Michigan. Here, in the second roles in a typical brigade of brick-faced hat and revolver lovers, a black-browed gangster-servant, Jerry, works. Apparently, having been seriously fined, and having fallen into disgrace, he receives a task not of pleasant ones - to look after the mustachioed cleaner and deliver him to the place of imprisonment in two days.
It so happened that the two people described above, completely different social strata, different fates and moral views, made up one of the most memorable duets. The role of the old man was played by Don Amici, the same age as James Stewart and Cary Grant, but it is unlikely that his filmography can be called great, and social life is so bright that rumors of romances with windy actresses, drunkenness or promiscuity would reach our days (or I don’t know what?). He had a great start and even became a star of early Hollywood, after which his filmography was replenished with works that did not even have a rating on the famous movie site. And it is symbolic that to touch the two leading awards of the world, opened by the Lumiere brothers, he happened at a time when the shoe cleaner left his shop. Amichi is Gino, Gino is Amichi. Perhaps it is not surprising at all that the inveterate playwright Mamet chose an actor for his film, whose noble look reflected the golden era of chaste early Hollywood, but it was so long ago that it was almost not true.
The Volpi Cup for the best role, confirming the killing power of the duo, for 88 years received and Joe Mantegna. He played Jerry, the unfortunate gangster. And the question is: in what genre will be a half hour of the union of the two “D”? No, it's not a comedy where an eccentric old man gives a shit from an inexperienced appendage of a crime syndicate. No, this is not an adventure escape, not an action movie or a tragedy. Perhaps, the genre affiliation of the film will not be able to determine from a snatch. Whose word is more powerful: a little man in a gray battered coat or a ring-bearer of a crime boss? To answer this question, the film enlists genre instruments and comedy and drama and almost a criminal saga. In semitones, like grains and chaffs, good and evil, comic and serious, music and silence, yesterday and tomorrow, truth and falsehood are separated.
48 Crazy Hours is a figment of David Mamet’s imagination, his own script, which he transferred to the cinema. This big Pulitzer Prize-winning film is impossible to calculate in advance by trailer, poster or synopsis, it will still surprise with its form and content. Today you are a prince, tomorrow you are a beggar. After all, everything changes: words are losing power, Chicago gangsters are successful politicians, and former stars are now old people, in whose eyes the honor and greatness of the years lived.