21/31: Killing Jimmy Hoffa
Screen: Augustus Entertainment
Utterly inelegant, charmingly energetic, Killing Jimmy Hoffa crams a lot into 79 minutes.
It’s an often unattractive and frustrating 79 minutes, and sometimes you wonder why you haven’t turned it off — the fonts, and there are too many of them, smack of a student project; the chyrons have spacing issues…
…aaaaand some other issues; “Bonnano” is not how the name is spelled; everyone’s lit like ’80s public access in North Jersey (and dressed like it too in a couple of cases; Dr. Buccellato, please get control of that collar or I’ll have to call the zoning board) — but it chews through Hoffa plot and theories at an impressive rate without getting too confusing. Hoffa had a long career, he got into a lot of shit, everybody else is named Tony or Joey and it’s hard to keep straight, but Killing Jimmy Hoffa‘s solid and rapid-fire interviews with guys who know a lot, but also know how to package it verbally, make it fun. I believe it’s George Anastasia who refers to Roland McMaster’s flunkies as “zombie stooges”; hee!
It’s kind of like an audiobook…but the author is reading it to you while you go for a run, and he’s running next to you so he’s sort of out of breath, and also he just had a pork roll egg and cheese so sometimes he burps, so it’s not the most professional presentation but everyone’s having a pretty good time nerding out. Actually, it’s really like that; the director, Al Profit (…right?), a Siemaszko-ish fellow with a Michigan accent as broad as a paddle, gives himself a bunch of talking-head interviews in the film. His head is always, like, in the bottom 40 percent of the screen, and he didn’t shave. Occasionally the other experts aren’t in focus, quite. KJH also has a weird hard-on for RFK and Joe Kennedy Sr., and when the first snitty chyrons about Old Joe buying his sons’ careers come up, the movie’s about to dogleg into the Castro assassination plots “most likely culminat[ing]” in JFK’s murder, go to the kitchen for a seltzer and just pretend you didn’t hear it. Aaaand the “everyone who could connect Castro, Ruby, and November 22, 1963 got whacked” wrap-up at the end.
It’s bigtime weird, Killing Jimmy Hoffa, but it’s just as bigtime informative. I didn’t know anything about Hoffa; now I do. I think?
Tags: 31 Days 31 Films Al Profit Casey Siemaszko George Anastasia Jimmy Hoffa Killing Jimmy Hoffa movies Roland McMaster the JFK assassination
Highly entertaining review, makes me want to watch. This made me laugh out loud on a cold morning: “Actually, it’s really like that; the director, Al Profit (…right?)”