Gloria (1980)

Gena Rowlands is great (she always is) in John Cassavetes' attempt to make an action flick - Gloria. It's an interesting movie, too, but mainly because of Gena Rowlands. In the wrong hands, it would have been a terrible film. You know, the kind of movie that has a male director showing off his devotion to the Maternal Instinct (not his own, the leading lady's) in a way that the sensible viewer instantaneously recognizes as pathological and creepy. In Cassavetes' film, Gena Rowland plays a gruff type who reluctantly takes six-year old Phil, a mob informant's kid, under her wing. Her friends killed his family, so their relationship is rather complicated. Yada, yada, silly story, lots of gun-waving, seedy back streets of New York. "I don't want to go to Pittsburgh. I'm tired." "So what?" There's a re-make of this. I suppose they cut out some aspects of the story when they made a new version. If you've seen it, you might know which parts. Well, there are tons of entertaining pieces of dialogue here. "I am the man! I am the man! I do everything I can." "You're not the man. You don't know anything." Gloria might be one hell of a mess (a six-year old kid who sounds like Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino in one...!), but it sure isn't the most boring mess I've seen. Did I mention I adore Gena Rowlands?