The Cotton Club (1984)

I have seen the Cotton Club countless times on video and on cable and saw it when it first release about 20 yrs ago. The picture always holds up. The combination of story, music and characters is as solid know as when it originally debuted. Because of the problems with the production, especially the problems that Robert Evans the producer was having, the picture was basically dumped, and disappeared. Everyone attached to it seemed to disown it, which is too bad, since it ranks as good as anything Francis Ford Coppola has ever done -- and he has done a lot of the greatest cinema ever made. Most, if not all of Cotton Club was done on sound stages, but Coppola makes the whole thing believable and he ties several stories together at once: Richard Gere and Diane Lane; and Gregory Hines and Lonette McKee. With the great music, the original stuff by Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington etc., neatly held together with new stuff by John Barry, The Cotton Club is a genuine musical, that, for my money, is more effective than Chicago, that Gere would star in more than 20 years later. If you have the chance, catch The Cotton Club on DVD or on cable. You will not be disappointed, and, if you are like me, you will rank this film as a worthy cousin to Mr. Coppola's masterworks, The Godfather I & II, and The Conversation.

Fmovies: This is a great movie. I personally don't think the beautiful Diane Lane could be in a bad flick, she would make the worst one good. I was impressed with Richard Geres musical ability as he played his own coronet and sounded as good as anyone I've ever heard. The dancing was superb, the costumes beautiful and the plot authentic. It took me back to the great musicals of the forties and fifties. I was raised in the waning days of the era of this movie, the thirties, and I could almost hear my Dad talking about the evils of the big cities while we listened to the radio news of gangsters and shootouts. I would recommend this movie to anyone. I rate it 10/10.

Even Francis Ford Coppola couldn't sustain the height of movie-making he achieved in the 1970s. Raised too high by initial expectations, then dismissed too brusquely when the critics got to see it, "The Cotton Club" exists in a kind of neutral zone, a grand spectacle undone by sloppy scriptwriting and unappealing characters that nevertheless shows the master with some juice still in his cup.

It's the story of Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere), a cornet player who one evening in 1928 almost accidentally saves the life of notorious mob boss Dutch Schultz (James Remar). Dutch, already a fan of his music, is appreciative of the extra service and brings Dwyer into his circle, which brings him into contact with Dutch's girl Vera (Diane Lane).

"If I didn't like you, you'd be dead," is Dutch's way of expressing friendship.

"It's nice to be liked," Dixie replies.

The film is centered around the nightclub of the title, a fashionable Harlem nightspot where blacks are welcome only on stage, entertaining the white customers. Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins) runs things with an eye for keeping order, especially where the volatile Dutchman is concerned. Sandman Williams (Gregory Hines) just wants to dance into the arms of Lila Rose (Lonette McKee), who is torn between the chance for true love versus the chance to pass for white in a white man's world.

The stacked cast even includes Nicolas Cage as Dixie's mad-dog gangster brother and Laurence Fishburne in one of his first signature tough-guy roles. "The white man has left me nothing but the underworld, and that is where I dance," he tells Sandman. "Where do you dance?" All this crammed into just over two hours leaves very little room to breathe, for a director who mastered movies which do exactly that. But with little useful dialogue except of the expository kind, characters coming and going all the time, left-field plot twists (Dixie goes to Hollywood and becomes an instant star), and a central romance between Gere and Lane that is long on open-mouth kissing but short on story, you need spectacle to keep your attention.

Remar makes the film worthwhile for me. His bug-eyed tantrums as Dutch are what stay with me when the film is over, yet he shows range, too, shy with Vera, henpecked with his wife, and amiable with Dixie in his guarded way. It's hard not to worry what will happen when he learns about Dixie and Vera, not only for the lovebirds but for Dutch, too. I only wish Remar could have played Dutch in the latter film set in the same milieu, "Billy Bathgate"; Dustin Hoffman is a great actor but was wrong for that part. Remar here fits into it like a cement overshoe.

The film also boasts great music, including singing from McKee and tapping from Hines and his brother Maurice that raise the roof and recall the famous baptism scene in Coppola's first "Godfather". Larry Marshall does a great Cab Calloway, conked locks whipping across his forehead.

Nothing is really wrong with "Cotton Club". But what's right doesn't stay right for long, and the rest doesn't hold together. It's a fun show, so long as you don't mind being a bit confused when the curtain comes down.

The Cotton Club fmovies. The Cotton Club is a dazzling, complex film that attempts so much it would be almost impossible for nearly any director to pull it off. But Francis Ford Coppola is not any director, so The Cotton Club is not just any movie. Rather, it succeeds at practically all levels and is certainly a film worth coming back to again and again.

Set in Harlem in the late 1920s, we are introduced to a group of Jazz Age-products, people who see themselves exactly as they are but all hope to go somewhere better. Two story lines occupy the plot; we get a good-looking young musician Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere) who gets involved in the mob after falling for one of the gangster's girlfriends (Diane Lane) and we get the story of a very talented black dancer (Gregory Hines) trying to prove his love to a half-black and half-white chorus girl who seems to struggle with her place in this more or less racist society. Almost every night, everyone gathers at The Cotton Club, one of the most famous clubs in the city and the blacks entertain while the whites drink and watch. But Coppola gives us a view from all angles so it doesn't feel as if we are missing anything important.

One of the biggest achievements of this film is its staging of the dance sequences, which are to say the least quite exquisite. Filled with colorful costumes and some mind-boggling tap numbers, at times you may forget that this is also a gangster picture. Indeed, some scenes feel just like Coppola's The Godfather with its quick bursts of violence but also in its tone of sad, elegiac setting. People come and go and some regret the things they do, but the music lives on. The acting is also very strong as Gere and Lane are quite wonderful in their first of three films together. Both were very good-looking and they do bring out the best in each other. Two supporting actors that really do steal the show are Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne as a mob boss and his head bodyguard. They share a tenacity and ferociousness in their dealings, but also have one really terrific scene involving Gwynne coming to see Hoskins after being kidnapped. A young Nicolas Cage also shows here he had incredible potential.

This Broadway version of the gangster film so familiar in Hollywood refreshes both genres as we see the similarities between the two. Indeed, many of the participators in the entertainment were also involved in the mob and Coppola shows how the two lives intertwine and bring a lot of trouble to everyone. This may seem as a strange mixing of genres and story lines for some people, but it is well worth the two hours. It is funny, sad, violent, poetic but also enormously entertaining and isn't that what the movies are all about? Coppola seems to think so.

Forget all the behind the scene's politics; Francis Ford Coppola's dazzlingly stylish, THE COTTON CLUB is certainly one of his best efforts. A movie that deserves it's place alongside other Coppola masterpieces such as, THE GODFATHER and APOCALYPSE NOW.

But the legacy of this film is very strange: The behind the scenes shenanigans is legendary, it was unjustly panned when it was first released, and box-office was slight; however, watching this film you can't help but wonder why?

Everything from the performances to the look of the film is first-rate; with James Remar particularly good as Dutch Schultz, and the ending of this film is nicely reminiscent of THE GODFATHER.

So if your looking for what might be considered a buried Coppola classic, check out THE COTTON CLUB.

This was an excellent movie in the respect that it recaptured 1928 New York. I was fortunate not to have lived back in that era but I believe the movie attempted to depict an honest portrayal of New York life in the 1920's which was probably different from the rest of the nation.

I notice that there is criticism on the acting but I believe that is how people talked back then. People were not spiritual in nature and for the most part, they were shallow and superficial. They were not deep,profound thinkers thus the actors were simply portraying the modern men and women of that era.