The Family Review

Rated R (Violence, Language and Brief Sexuality)

Running Time: 1 Hour & 50 Minutes

Cast-

Robert De Niro-Giovanni Manzoni/Fred Blake

Michelle Pfeiffer-Maggie Blake

Dianna Agron-Belle Blake

John D'Leo-Warren Blake

Tommy Lee Jones-FBI Agent Robert Stansfield

Jimmy Palumbo-Di Cicco

Domenick Lombardozzi-Caputo

Stan Carp-Don Luchese

Vincent Pastore-Fat Willy

Jon Freda-Rocco

Michael J. Panichelli Jr.-Billy the Bug

Paul Borghese-Albert

Anthony Desio-Bernie

Ted Arcidi-Tommy

David Belle-Mezzo

Raymond Franza-Paulo

Directed by Luc Besson

"Yes, this baseball bat will do fine."

Note: Screened on Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at AMC Loews Lincoln Square 13.

Luc Besson's latest film, "The Family," gives new meaning to the age old adage 'old habits die hard.' It's a little strange to see the 54-year-old French director back in the saddle considering his last live-action film to receive a wide release was 1999's critically-reviled "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" (30% on Rotten Tomatoes). Since then, Besson has been spending his time writing and/or producing an endless stream of disposable Euro-action thrillers like "The Transporter" and "Taken" while occasionally returning to the director's chair, specifically to adapt his "Arthur" series of fantasy novels into a trilogy of animated films. Last year, he branched out into more dramatic territory for the first time with "The Lady," a biopic based on the life of former Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi starring Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis but the film failed to find an audience and received largely negative reviews with 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. Unfortunately, Besson's losing streak is set to continue as "The Family," based on the 2004 French novel Malavita by Tonino Benacquista, fails to offer much in the way of laughs despite its impeccable cast, with the film suffering from jarring tonal shifts and a meandering narrative that goes absolutely nowhere until the last twenty minutes.

Former New York City Mafia boss Giovanni Manzoni (Robert De Niro) is placed into the witness protection program when he rats out his former comrades to the FBI, resulting in a $20 million bounty being placed on his head by the incarcerated dons. Robert Stansfield (Tommy Lee Jones), the agent assigned to the case, decides to relocate Giovanni, his wife Maggie (Michelle Pfeiffer), and their two teenage children Belle (Dianna Agron) and Warren (John D'Leo) to a small, quiet village in Normandy, France. Living under the fake name 'Fred Blake,' the restless don settles into his new home and diverts attention from inquisitive neighbors by disguising himself as a vacationing author. With her husband hard at work on his memoirs, Maggie busies herself by attending church in an attempt to make a positive impression on the community and cleanse her family of sin. At the local high school, Warren turns the tables on his bullies by conning his way through the student body while Belle falls in love with her math tutor and is swept up in a wave of romance. However, old habits never die as the Manzonis find themselves once again resolving their problems the 'family' way, which puts their cover at risk and alerts brutal Mafia hitman Rocco (Jon Freda) of their location.

Those hoping for "The Family" to be a return to form for Luc Besson will have to keep on hoping as this Mafia-focused black comedy represents another misfire for the French writer/director. It's not a complete disaster but the film's tone is all over the place, with the narrative coming off as both paper-thin and over-stuffed at the same time. Despite the story insisting otherwise, the Manzonis never really gel together as a close-knit family due to the way Besson and co-writer Michael Caleo pull each of the four characters into their own individual subplots that have little to do with each other. While this approach might have been fine in Benacquista's novel, it instead results in a film that feels fragmented and scattershot. The only member of the family that has more or less a complete arc is Giovanni, who finds himself in a reflective mood and decides to take his current cover as a writer to heart by beginning to chronicle his memoirs. He continuously insists via voiceover that he's a 'decent guy' even though flashbacks showing him dumping people into corrosive acid says otherwise. There's a winking self-awareness to the former mobster's prose as Besson uses his words as a way to comment on how criminal behavior is often excused and even celebrated by audiences in both film and literature. However, the director gets a little too 'meta' for his own good when he has Giovanni attend a local screening of…wait for it…"Goodfellas." It's by far the biggest laugh you'll get in the film but it also serves to illustrate how lacking in wit the picture is.

The rest of "The Family" is your typical fish-out-of-water tale. Upon moving in, Maggie immediately draws attention to herself by blowing up the local supermarket when its owner makes disparaging comments about the eating habits of Americans. The idea of 'conflict-resolution' for the Manzonis lead to some amusing highlights, such as Belle repeatedly smashing a tennis racket over a male student's head after he gets a little too touchy-feely for his own good but these gleefully amoral moments are contrasted with scenes of depraved violence, including an attempted rape. Also problematic is the way Besson resolves each of the family member's subplots, with the aforementioned Belle bizarrely contemplating suicide when the math tutor she falls for rejects her while Warren decides to just haul ass once the school discovers his illicit activities. Even Giovanni isn't immune to this issue as the already messy story has him shaking down crooked plumbers and snooty politicians in order to fix his water problem. Most of the action is self-contained to the last fifteen minutes yet the lead-up to it hinges on a ridiculous set of groan-inducing coincidences. Suspension of disbelief is a given in most films but Besson is simply asking for too much here as all it does is invite scrutiny to the film's more puzzling aspects, like how the Manzonis managed to survive for six years in the witness protection program despite all the trouble they cause. In addition, the French setting is completely wasted; you can interchange it with any other foreign country that's rife with cultural stereotypes and the film wouldn't be any different.

The performances are generally fine in spite of the middling material, with Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer having a ball as they riff on their mobster film legacies while lending their respective characters a small measure of depth. Dianna Agron's line readings tend to lean toward the bland side but the way Besson takes advantage of her virginal 'girl-next-door' image makes up for it, with her character Belle lashing out at anyone who so much as looks at her wrong...or steals her pencil case. A late scene where she lets out a scream of relief and frustration after narrowly escaping a vicious Mafia hitman stands as the film's sole honest moment. John D'Leo delivers a charming performance as smart-aleck Warren, although his screen-time feels curiously limited compared to his co-stars. Clearly not enjoying himself is Tommy Lee Jones as Giovanni's exasperated FBI handler. The actor's curmudgeonly demeanor betrays the fact that he'd rather be somewhere else and wants to cash in his paycheck as soon as possible.

Released on September 13, 2013, "The Family" has received largely negative reviews with 33% on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics noted that it was 'fitfully funny and impeccably cast, but Luc Besson's [latest film] suffers from an overly familiar setup and a number of jarring tonal shifts.' There was a relative lack of buzz as the release date neared yet its performing moderately well at the box office considering its production budget was only $30 million. Its final weekend gross is expected to come in at around $15 million. While "The Family" isn't a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, it does represent a missed opportunity for Besson as he squanders his talented cast with a script that has no idea what it wants to be and goes nowhere for much of its running time. Maybe Martin Scorsese should've exercised some quality-control before stamping his name on it as executive producer.

Final Rating: 2.5 out of 5

"There was a time when I had it all. People would ask me, what was it like being untouchable? The question they really should have asked was: What happens when it's all over?"