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By PAUL BRENNER
Warner Home Video has released screenwriter James Toback's first directorial effort from 1977,
"Fingers," featuring a simmering Harvey Keitel in his first star turn as a loner stuck on the road to nowhere.
Jimmy Fingers is caught between polar opposites -- becoming a successful concert pianist or a collector for his
loan-shark father. Toback's character study charting Jimmy's descent into thug hood is Dostoyevsky filtered through a B
mob flick. Toback also ladles on a psychosexual undercurrent, oozing from his characters' gazes and movements. "Fingers"
shot on New York City streets during the bankrupt "Washington to NYC: Drop Dead" era of squalor and decay, is emphasized
by Toback with a series widescreen, low-angle compositions.
Aside from Keitel, "Fingers" boasts a potpourri of character turns by Jim Brown (a charged performance of slithering
sexuality as the sex-machine to all the chicks), Marian Seldes, Danny Aiello, Tisa Farrow, Anthony Sirico, Dominic
Chianese, and a half-drunk Michael V. Gazzo, who gets to utter the most hardboiled line in the film -- "I should have
strangled you in your crib."
The special features include an audio commentary by Toback, the theatrical trailer, and a short interview with Toback
and Keitel entitled "Fingers: A Conversation About Independent Film with Harvey Keitel and James Toback." |
