The Last Godfather 2011

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Last Godfather

‘Last Godfather’ an amiable gangster farce: Tips its hat to genre classics

 

 

 

THE LAST GODFATHER Directed by Hyung-rae Shim

Written by Shim

Starring: Shim, Harvey Keitel, Jon Polito, Jocelin Donahue

Running time: 115 minutes

At: Boston Common, Fenway, Showcase Revere

Rated: PG-13 (brief sexual humor)

He’s squat, pudgy, middle-aged, nondescript, with his black hair, fastidiously parted and pasted down, perhaps a dye job. But Hyung-rae Shim, born in 1958, is dizzy and funny in a very retro comedic way, good at Lou Costello pratfalls and in step with Jerry Lewis silliness, Three Stooges infantilism. Barely known in the United States, Shim is a renowned South Korean TV comic, who also has been involved in countless movie productions. He’s taken his old-fashioned talents on the road with the amiable gangster farce “The Last Godfather,’’ shot in LA, and in English.

 

 

 

Shim wrote and directed and stars in this genre amusement, which is set in the early 1950s, with Southern California standing in capably for New York’s Little Italy. Back then, that was prime Mafia turf, Mott Street to Delancey. Marty Scorsese, residing there, was a wee ragazzo.

 

But how do you get a Korean into an Italian-American tale? The aging Mafia boss, Don Carini (Harvey Keitel), announces to his minions that, to their chagrin, he’s bypassing them for his successor. There’s a son, conceived in Asia who grew up there in an orphanage. It’s time to import him from Korea so he can take over the syndicate. Enter Young-Gu, Carini’s aging boy, played with giddy abandon by Shim.

 

The rest of the goons size up Young-Gu as “a total moron,’’ and, for a while, he acts happily brainless, i.e., getting his lip stuck on the suction of a vacuum cleaner. Agog at the sight of a bra display, he squeezes the tactile cups. And when it’s time to torture an enemy mobster? Young-Gu puts ice cubes in the thug’s boxer shorts. If Young-Gu is mentally arrested, his daddy don hardly notices. Carini is so happy to have a son that he even tucks the lad into bed.

 

Stop me if you’ve heard this plot: Young-Gu falls for lovely Nancy (Jocelin Donahue), the daughter of a rival criminal (Jon Polito), and both fathers object to their coupling. What’s nice about “The Last Godfather’’ is that it revels in its borrowings. A gangster underling points out that this unwelcome romance is like “Romeo and that broad.’’ Don Carini is seen in his back yard growing tomatoes in affectionate reference to Don Corleone’s time (“The Godfather’’) minding his garden. Someone speaks to Carini of “mean streets,’’ an allusion to Keitel’s early triumph in the 1973 Scorsese classic.

 

Keitel, now past 70 and silver-haired, is really good here, effortlessly effective as the Mafia boss. In fact, all the performances are smooth. Shim has no problem directing American actors. The story he concocts for them is thin and improbable yet passably cute. Young-Gu stumbles into being a first-rate Mafia soldier. While making do as a racketeer, he — why not? — inadvertently invents the miniskirt and the Big Mac. (Never mind that the miniskirt is 1960s.)

 

“The Last Godfather’’ is rated PG-13 for good reason. It’s such an innocent work, with only the slightest sexual innuendo. Most remarkable is the lack of violence. It’s not until the last act that a few bad guys are offed in a gang war. But they tumble and fall acrobatically dead without any spilled blood, like in a movie for kids in the 1950s.

Might we commend Hyung-rae Shim for such a benign film made in today’s gun-wielding USA?

Gerald Peary can be reached at gpeary@geraldpeary.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-04/ae/29380907_1_mafia-boss-gangster-jon-polito