The dialogue in David Mamet’s best work has a certain rhythm to it. Few actors deliver such lines as brilliantly as Joe Mantegna. There is almost a musical quality to his line deliveries.
He stars with Don Ameche in the second picture Mamet directed, and that is 1988’s Things Change. I thought I had seen all of Mamet’s directorial efforts up through Redbelt, yet I somehow missed this highly enjoyable crime comedy-drama. This wasn’t just a pleasant surprise, but more like some miraculous film from a parallel universe.
Ameche is a simple shoe repairman in Chicago. A major crime boss (Mike Nussbaum) makes this man an offer. He can fulfill Ameche’s greatest dream. In exchange Ameche will confess to shooting to death a man. Nussbaum says the sentence will be no more than three years After that, Ameche can fulfill his previously unimaginable dream of owning a fishing boat in Sicily. I wonder if any Sicilians who own nothing more than a humble little boat know they are living the dream of an old man in America. I have a strange feeling some of them would do the same, just to take Ameche’s job in Chicago.
Mantegna is a low-level guy in the organization, and is currently on probation. He has a neat little bit of business while scrubbing pots and pans when the envelopes for each thug’s “bonus” are handed out: he blows into the one handed to him, shrugs and tears it in half. Some filmmakers would show you the inside of the empty envelope. Some actors would make a bigger show of disappointment. Both the filmmakers and the people on camera assume the audience is smarter than that.
Expectations are subverted from the very beginning, with opening credits displayed over a photo album of very old pics. I assume these are details from the life of Ameche’s character. A plucked mandolin accompanies the imagery, and a crossfade takes us to somebody actually playing that music. Then they stop, pick up another one and take that to the sales counter of this musical instrument store. I was hoping there would be revelation the buyer was R.E.M.’s Peter Buck. In nothing else, I was hoping the customer might start playing “Losing My Religion”, even if that track was a couple of years away from even being written.
From this vantage point, gangsters played by Ricky Jay and J.J. Johnston spy Ameche walking to work and follow him to his business. Jay handles the baffled old man a business card and a $100 bill, saying a friend of theirs wants to see him. Ameche’s reaction: “I’m just a guy who shines shoes.” Jay: “There will be shoes there.”
This is where the offer is extended to Ameche to do another man’s time, though the impression given is the kindly tradesman cannot refuse. In acknowledgement of this deal completed, Nussbaum places a Sicilian coin in Ameche’s hand, saying, “A big man knows the value of a small coin. My friendship is a small coin, but it is all I have to offer you.” Given that coin is atop the photo album which is the first thing we saw, this will obviously be of some importance later.
Mantegna is given the opportunity to redeem himself by keeping watch over Ameche for the weekend, until the District Attorney’s office opens on Monday. He isn’t happy that a man is being rewarded so little for sacrificing three years of his life, and takes it upon himself to treat the man to a weekend in Lake Tahoe.
That seemed to me like a weird destination but, in the world of this movie, it is an area with a high mafia presence. Mantegna is spotted at the airport by an impossibly young and impossibly blond William H. Macy. These two go way back, and the Macy, now driving a limo for the organization, is amused by Mantegna’s fall from grace: “Heard you had to stay after school. Couldn’t obey orders.” But Mantegna’s vagueness regarding Ameche leads Macy to believe this is an important man, and so arranges to put these visitors from Chicago up in the most lavish penthouse suite in town.
It is great to watch Ameche, in a performance of few words. Not unlike Peter Sellers in Being There, this is somebody who drifts along while others believe they are in the presence of somebody important. But there is a sparkle in Ameche’s eye, something telling he is aware of an accidental con he is not actively perpetuating, and he is comfortable with the results.
One surprise which makes for a very uncomfortable moment is when the two men from Chicago are summoned to mansion of top mob guy Robert Prosky. The vagaries of Ameche’s responses to inquiries about his history are unsatisfactory until Ameche, in desperation, flashes the coin he was given earlier by Nussbaum. It will turn out Prosky as a tattoo on his forearm of the same. Crisis averted, and the two men develop a strong, instant rapport. Again like Being There, this leads to a simple conversation, this one concerning shoes, where both men think they are in perfect communication, when only one of them is talking about literal footwear.
The cast is perfect without exception, as I have come to expect from Mamet’s work. Ameche is one of the few faces in this not otherwise represented in his filmography. In addition to the aforementioned, we also get bit parts by J.T. Walsh, Jonathan Katz, Steven Goldstein, and the Felicity Huffman, not yet the wife of Macy. There is also a fleeting glimpse of Lionel Mark Smith, who would go on to a juicy part as a detective in Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner.
Things Change is a surprise from Mamet, in a co-write with Shel Silverstein. It is gentler than most of his other work, but not naive. It has heart, but it doesn’t come by any of its most touching moments cheaply. It earns such moments as an unexpectedly touching farewell gesture by some young people in Tahoe who finds themselves moved by their brief time with Ameche. In my mind, I know I will categorize this in my mind as a comedy, but it is far less of one that State and Main, and nowhere near as acerbic. Still, I laughed hard at this discover Mantegna makes at the worst possible moment: “Guy is the head of the Vegas mob and he can’t keep the car filled with gas! What country is this?”
Dir: David Mamet
Starring Don Ameche, Joe Mantegna, Robert Prosky
Watched on Powerhouse/Indicator UK (region B) blu-ray