The Second Gloria

Critics disliked the 1999 version of Gloria, the remake of the 1980 John Cassavetes film. It currently has a 14% on Rotten Tomatoes. The performances aren't as good, particularly when it comes to the kid Gloria protects, and the two characters lack the chemistry the two had in the 1980 film. But I'd argue the 1999 film is much, much better written.

Instead of Gloria being a mysterious, unstoppable force with ill-defined relations with the mob, this Gloria, played by the much prettier Sharon Stone, has spent three years in prison for her Irish mob lieutenant lover.

Her hairstyle is improbable, to say the least, for a woman just out of prison.

She confronts Kevin (Jeremy Northam) and demands the payment she was promised for doing time. He'd rather pay her by continuing to pay her apartment rent and giving her shopping money--to keep her entangled in his life, in other words. When she makes off with the kid, she's partially motivated by a desire to escape and take revenge herself.

Unlike the characters in the first film, both Gloria and the kid (Jean-Luke Figueroa) actually have friends and family they can turn to, though ultimately can't rely on. They don't feel like two people dropped onto an alien planet like they did in the original version.

John Cassavetes' direction in the initial scenes of the 1980 movie had a raw energy this more polished film by Sidney Lumet lacks. But the final confrontation between Gloria and the mob boss, played by George C. Scott in his final film role, feels more even handed and suspenseful. The mobsters in this movie feel like dangerous people instead of the Keystone Kops they amount to in the 1980 movie.

It makes more sense now that Gloria can't go to the cops, and it also makes sense that she's able to go to a priest. Trust a director whose career began well before the '70s to remember there's more to priests than paedophilia.

It's no masterpiece but 1999's Gloria is nowhere near as bad as its reputation.

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