Things Change (1988)

Directed by David Mamet; produced by Michael Hausman

Gino (Don Ameche) is an elderly Chicago shoe-shine man, with a dream of owning a fishing boat in his native Sicily. He also resembles a Mob assassin who was identified by witnesses as the killer of a recently murdered man. Gino reluctantly agrees to impersonate the killer and go to prison for a few years, in return for enough money to fulfill his dream. Jerry (Joe Mantegna) is a disgraced low-level criminal assigned to look after Gino for a weekend, and deliver him to a courthouse the following Monday. Hoping to impress his charge - and boost his own ego - Jerry whisks the old man off to Lake Tahoe for some fun. For the next couple of days, however, fun and trouble are interchangeable.

Things Change is a change itself for David Mamet. His movies are usually driven by dialogue; indeed, a number of them, such as Glengarry Glen Ross, were originally written for the stage. Things Change is more about situation and character, both of which are revealed more by sight than by word. As well, Mamet’s well-known use of obscenities - usually unnecessary in movies but seeming quite natural in his scripts - is nearly unheard here. And finally, this is a comedy, with dramatic overtones. As one other reviewer wrote, a Mamet comedy is almost an oxymoron.

This effort reminded me of the attempt of another idiosyncratic director, David Lynch, to go in different direction with his excellent The Straight Story. While that change of pace was a success, Things Change is, regrettably, not.

The advantages to the movie are the actors and their performances. Ameche is perfect as the old shoe-shine man. Seemingly diffident, Gino has a definite personality; he appears simply to have had very little opportunity to reveal it. Humble he may be, but not quite meek.

Mantegna is equally well cast as his minder, a man who is submissive in the face of stronger, fiercer men, but boastful for those he thinks are smaller than he. Nonetheless, he is a kind man, who may have been somebody like Gino had been when young.

The cast is filled with Mamet ‘regulars’, such as Ricky Jay, J. J. Johnston and William H. Macy, and those connected with him, such as J. T. Walsh. They all do a fine job.

The problem here is the story. I’ve read that many consider Things Change to be a ‘gentle comedy’. I found it to be closer to a gentle farce - and a farce that is gentle just doesn’t work. Once in Tahoe, Gino and Jerry are tossed into situations of mistaken identities, wrong locations and awkward questions. There is even a scene of Mantegna sneaking out of a window which is reminiscent of the slamming doors and running cast-members of a traditional farce. But none of it is handled in the way it should be. Either the pace should have been frenetic (which would have been a mistake, I think) or the farcical element discarded all together for more subdued humour (which, admittedly, is also included.)

Various incidents are unbelievable, even in the context of comedy. Why would a small-time mafiioso fly himself and an old man off to Tahoe for a weekend just to impress the latter when he is already in deep trouble with his superiors? Where did he get the money? (Earlier, we see him being given an empty pay-envelope for botching his previous assignment.)

I also found it hard to credit the manager of a prestigious hotel handing over an entire floor and granting unlimited credit to unknown guests on the sole recommendation of a limousine driver. And at one point, a Mafia boss does a favour for Gino which would have crossed and annoyed a fellow boss and must surely have ruined the latter’s carefully laid plans. Despite the set-up for this favour, it is a trick that feels too neat.

Despite the performances, which are of the expected high calibre, Things Change is not very funny, not as charming as it would have liked to be, and a failed attempt at something different by a famed writer and director.