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List Price: $14.99 | | Label: Miramax
Salesrank: 55573
Released: September 7, 1999 |
| Our Price: $5.89 |
| Used Price: $3.51 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
An intense, all-star action-thriller, ALBINO ALLIGATOR is directed by Academy Award(R)-winner Kevin Spacey (1999 Best Actor -- AMERICAN BEAUTY). Matt Dillon (THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY), and Emmy-winner Gary Sinise (1998 Best Actor In A Miniseries Or Movie, GEORGE WALLACE) play brothers Dova and Milo ... a couple of small-time crooks suddenly in way over their heads! When a holdup goes terribly wrong, the robbers flee to a local bar, desperately taking everyone inside hostage! With nowhere to run and time running out, it's a deadly situation where every second counts! Also starring Golden Globe-winner Faye Dunaway (1999 Best Supporting Actress, GIA) -- expect unexpected twists and turns, all leading to an incredibly explosive climax!
Description of Albino Alligator:
Actor Kevin Spacey made his directorial debut in this uneven crime thriller that has the claustrophobic feel of a play. Matt Dillon, Gary Sinise, and William Fichtner play a trio of robbers who have just pulled a job gone wrong. On the run from the cops, they hide out in a basement bar, where they try to figure out their next move. There's a certain amount of urgency, however, because Sinise, the brains of the outfit, is badly wounded--which means that Fichtner, the group psycho, is allowed to run wild, terrorizing the barflies unlucky enough to be their hostages. As the cops swarm outside the bar--thinking these three are major criminals rather than small potatoes--tensions mount, mostly through misunderstanding. But it's all a lot of talk, not nearly enough of it interesting, that pushes the movie slowly to its inevitable conclusion. --Marshall Fine
Albino Alligator Reviews:
Could have been worse. 
2008-04-17 - The transition from actor to director is not always as easy as it seems. Sometimes it takes years to make the transition, and that is quite apparent with Kevin Spacey's Albino Alligator. Spacey attempts to hit a homerun on his first at bat but ends up getting a solid single instead.
The film deals with a botched heist (not the sort of story-line that is exactly lacking in Hollywood these days) and the relationships between the three main criminals. What we see is the thin lines between loyalty and survival, and the great lengths some will go to ensure their own preservation, even at the expense of those closest to them.
There are moments in intense drama throughout the film, and a climax that you probably won't see coming, but overall, Albino Alligator reminds me of that glass of water in the middle of the night. It's refreshing, but if you weren't so tired and were able to pour a glass of something else, you would. This is lazy-day-watch-it-on-IFC entertainment, not go-out-of-your-way-to-rent-it entertainment.
A slow day at the actor's workshop... 
2008-02-29 - by dane youssef
A gang of crooks. The perfect plan. It all goes wrong. They're in trouble. The police are outside. They're cornered. What are they gonna do now?
Sound familiar?
The movie seems like it's trying to be a combination of the acting workshop, the "indie" film and the theater.
It's the kind of things that actors love--it's kind of like a workshop or a play because it mostly consists of tight focusing on the actors acting... acting angry, tense, scared, conversing, scheming, planning--giving the performers a lot of free range to really ham it all up.
A trio of crooks, one leader, one goon, one brother, come up with a big heist scheme... and a monkey wrench is thrown into the works. To top things off, there's a bit of a "fender-bender" and one of the crooks in flung through the back of the windshield.
The cops are on their tail and they stumble into a bar named poetically (and leadenly) "Dino's Last Chance."
Spacey, as a director, tries to keep the focus on the actors' performances and delivery of dialouge. He pans over to a bright passion-red cigarette ad of a smoking and smoldering Bogart. And he keeps all the violence off-screen, really.
I think that was a mistake. Focusing on the intensity and gruesome violent scenes would have given the movie some edge.
The problem with the movie is that it moves too slow and suffers from miscasting in almost every role. Matt Dillon ("Drugstore Cowboy" and "Wild Things") seems too young and too idealistic to be the leader of this gang.
Gary Sinese seems to brooding and deep in thought to be a spineless tag-along with these guys and Joe Mantaga is effective as the traditional routine foul-swearing mad-dog police lieutenant who's all thumbs, but he isn't given anything to really do here.
William Fischter is the only actor who is believable in his role as a brainless grunt who just wants to spill blood.
And the crooks are in a tense situation where they either go to jail or they try to think of some way out of this.
Spacey lacks the ability to create a lot of tension and keep it going. The characters are mostly chatting away, trying to think of a plan... and they're to calm and too articulate. There's even a scene where the crooks are playing pool with a whole swarm of armed cops right outside, ready to strike. At one point, one of the crooks even call the police who are right outside the bar. Oh brother. Oh bother.
These cops are going to either blow them away or going to lock them up. Shouldn't the holed-up crooks be a little scared, a little uneasy? Meanwhile, all the real action is happening inside.
Someone whips out a gun, a baseball bat, which leads to an ugly confrontation off-screen and there's one more casualty that happens that's... well, kinda sad. But...
Faye Dunaway also should have spent more time with a dialect coach, improving on her New Orleans accent. And Skeet Ullrich is fine in a small part.
A cop listening in reaches for a pack of matches at the absolute worst time is a nice look. And so is a scene where someone goes right through the rear windshield.
The dialouge is obviously trying to go for a David Mamet approach and it's as profane, but never as realistic or as insightful.
The movie feels like too much of what it really is... a really low-budget movie with an actor behind the camera for the first time directing other actors from a script that's "not bad, but needs a few more re-writes." Spacey shows he's not a terrible director, but he lacks a sort of feel for "shaping a movie" and it feels like he's just filming actors act.
These actors are all talented and could work with the material, but they all feel out of place. As I said before, the movie really suffers from miscasting.
I don't mean that the wrong actors were cast. I think they found just the right cast, but placed them in all the wrong roles. I think switching some of the roles would've helped immensely.
Having veteran mob actor Joe Mantagna play the leader of the pack, Gary Sinese as the angry police lieutenant outside on his bullhorn giving orders and barking at his troops, keeping Fischter in his "bloodthirsty goon" part and Matt Dillion as the sacrificial lamb. That would have been a big improvement.
When some actors direct, it works. They can even win Oscars for it. But a lot of the time, when actors direct, they have a tendency to just focus on the performances. Just shoot the actors acting.
Sometimes it works... but they need a good showcase for it. An excuse for it.
Hostage situations are all pretty much the same in real life just like coming-of-age stories so it's only natural that movies about them will go from point A to point B as well.
There are a few really great entries into this genre.' Spacey himself appeared in a similar movie about hostage situations: "The Negotiator."
This certainly won't become a cult classic, let alone one of AFI's 100. Still, it does have a few nice moments and personal touches, but in the end, it's instantly forgettable and the kind of movie that would play best on regular TV. It's just not worth going out of your way to see.
I give a 3 out of 10. Better luck next time, Space.
I heard his "Beyond The Sea" was a better effort...
[...]
Decent dialogue drama....(ha! good aliteration!!)
2007-11-25 - There are some movies out there that, in my opinion, exist to give us faith in the movie industry. After years and years of main stream fluff (a family friendly term) and the shear lack of creativity in Hollywood, you lose your desire to see good films or just become numb to them. However, the channels like IFC, PBS, TCM, and Sundance keep our eyes, ears, and hearts open to good film making and new ventures. One such film is 1996's Albino Alligator, a caper/hostage flick by Kevin Spacey that doesn't break any new film making grounds but delivers a host of good performances amid an uneven flow.
Albino Alligator is the story of three crooks, Dova (Matt Dillion), his brother Milo (Gary Sinies), and Law (William Fichtner) who, after a botched robbery attempt, are pinned in a old bar by the ATF and police in New Orleans. Through simultaneous story telling, we learn that the ATF has surrounded the bar in attempt to capture a gun smuggler. Through a series of miscues and circumstance, the tension builds between patrons of the bar and the crooks as well as the ATF and local media till in ends in a violent and unexpected end. Look for good performances from, Faye Dunaway, Viggo Mortensen, M.Emmet Walsh, Skeet Ulrich, John Spencer, and Joe Mantegna.
When watching Albion Alligator, you have to be in the mood for heavy drama and angst, because this movie can't really deliver anything else This film has a few, brief scenes of action, but is mainly a film about the characters, and in that respect, the film does a decent job. The budding angst in the bar is well played and acted. None of the actors over play their parts and allow the scene to play out. Matt Dillion's Dova and William Fichtner's Law are the highlights of the films acting. Fichtner's Law is a very bad man among other bad men. He oozes greasiness and seems lower than the proverbial snake in the grass all the while losing his emotional grasp on the situation. In contrast, Dillion's Dova is like the naive child thinking they know the way things work in the world until it's all turned on its ear and he can't handle the responsibility on his shoulders. These two performances carry this film far and without them, this film would hardly be worth the look.
Kevin Spacey's direction is nothing special with nothing really standing out but then again, this is movie reads like a stage play with only a handful of set pieces and doesn't require a unique vision in direction, just someone to keep the actors in moment while in front of the camera. The film's unevenness is its biggest handicap and keeps this film from being a cult hit. Unlike other dialogue heavy features ala Glenngary Glen Ross (Kevin Spacey co-started), this movie has moments of directionless dialogue that could have been cut to tighten up the film and keep the tension up. In the end, this is a good movie to watch if you see it floating around, otherwise, rent the previously mentioned Glenngary Glen Ross to watch a dialogue drama at its best.
Great Actors & Director but Bad Script
2006-05-24 - There's a superb cast assembled here. You have Faye Dunaway, Gary Sinise, Viggo Mortensen, Joe Mantegna and several others. It's like a play - primarily set in one small, claustrophobic basement bar with only one exit. There's a trio of brothers who are petty thieves who take the few bar people hostage while they try to think their way out of their mess. In the meantime the cops and news reporters do their usual dances outside.
This is of course a theme that's been done many, many times in many situations. How the hostage-takers each have different views on what to do and fight amongst themselves. How the hostages first rebel against the situation and then try to work with the captors in order to work things out. How the newscasters "screw things up" for the cops by broadcasting information they shouldn't.
I really appreciated that, while the movie is inherently about violence and threatened violence, that they didn't make the movie about gore. They explicitly set scenes up so that you see what's coming - but you don't see the actual damage. You see the results reflected in the eyes of the actors. It's about the emotion and the impact.
The problem isn't the directing - Kevin Spacey does a nice job of framing the shots and setting the pace. You feel the tension build as the characters stay locked in this small space for hour after hour. The problem isn't the actors either - each of the actors gives their character a sense of honest realism that reflects their skills.
The problem isn't the "setup" either - most plays are set up exactly like this one and many of those do fantastically well on the movie screen. I could name a ton of movies that are set primarily in one room, where that helps the characters to shine.
The issue here is the writing. You can see the actors really struggle to deliver the lines with feeling - but it can be really difficult. First, the 3 brothers. Matt Dillon's character is a not-smart flip-flopper who starts to agree with whoever talked with him last. William Fichtner is the psychotic one who wants to kill everyone - he even slugs his own brother for the hell of it. Gary Sinese is the smart brother, but he doesn't have much influence over his brothers. The dynamics between these three could really have been incredible - but instead the dialogue makes it frustrating and at times inane. When characters start dropping, you really are rooting for some of the brothers to go.
The bar patrons really aren't fleshed out enough for you to care much about them. In fact, Faye's character comes off rather rough at the beginning - especially with her son being there, it's hard to believe she'd really antagonize the gun-toting criminals as much as she does. Viggo's character, as the super-quiet Canadian, has almost zero personality. His great talent with languages could really have been shown off, given that the character seems to be French speaking, but it isn't.
In all, there was huge potential - but the script's flaws were just too large to overcome. I found the experience quite unsatisfying.
Great cast with dialogue that doesn't quite match up
2005-08-16 - I was drawn to buy this movie because of it's cast. The movie revolves around three desparate second rate crooks that get themselves in a mess and end up taking a tavern's patrons hostage. Watching this moving in 2005, it seems dated, even though I didn't think it needed to. I remember another movie involving hostage taking; a much older film, called Straw Dogs, yet it did not seem awkward watching it years later. There are a few tense moments and a few surprises along the way, but this film could have been much, much better.
