Cast: Steve Parlavecchio, Patrick McGaw, Joseph Lindsey, Mira Sorvino
Director: Rob Weiss
Producer: Matt Blumberg
Screenplay: Rob Weiss
Music: Mick Jones
U.S. Distributor: Fine Line Features
Andy (Steve Parlavecchio), Trevor (Patrick McGaw), and Billy (Joseph Lindsey) have grown up together in the Long Island community of Five Towns. By their own admission, their friendship started almost from birth. However, relationships that were once strong begin to fracture with the onset of adulthood. A drug bust gone bad sends Trevor to prison and he emerges bitter and disillusioned. Billy becomes a big-time hood using Andy as his gopher, a role from which the somewhat-timid twenty-three year old is desperate to escape.
Amongst Friends is another story about crime in America, but instead of telling about the "have nots" of society, the film focuses on three boys who come from wealthy, respectable families. Bored and dis satisfied with comfortable lives where all their conventional wants are met, they crave something different and exciting. Andy's grandfather, who built his fortune as a bookie, and his gangster friends become inspirations and role models.
The three main characters couldn't be more different. Trevor is a dreamer and a romantic, a man to whom freedom and love mean more than all the money in the world. His feelings for Laura (Mira Sorvino, daughter of Goodfellas actor Paul Sorvino) bring him back to Five Towns following a lengthy absence, and his return sets in motion the film's events. Billy is, plain and simple, a thoroughly unlikable bully. In fact, if there's an obvious flaw in any of the characters, it's that he has absolutely no redeeming characteristics. Of the three, Andy is the most discontented. Each of his friends has something while he's still striving for that one big score to fill the gaping void. It isn't that he needs the money -- he can get that from his parents any time he wants it -- but the cash is a way of proving that he can hit the big time, even if it is gained through drug deals.
Solid performances by the lead actors, not to mention strong support from a cast of equally-unfamiliar names, bring these people to life. Patrick McGaw is superlative, as is Mira Sorvino, despite the limitations of her role. Also worthy of note is Sorvino's grandfather, Ford Sorvino, who has a series of hilarious cameos that provide most of the film's scarce comic relief.
Amongst Friends never lets up. Scene after scene flashes by, often moving the plot along at dizzying speeds. Movies less economic with dialogue and story development might take an hour longer to tell the same tale. The transitions in Amongst Friends are frequently abrupt, and writer/director Rob Weiss obviously doesn't believe in wasting screen time. In fact, it could be argued that the film moves too fast, especially at the beginning when it takes a while to sort out who the individual characters are and exactly what they're up to. The voiceover narrative by Andy doesn't help much since there's too much information to absorb in such a short time.
This is one of those low-budget motion pictures (it cost only $900,000 to make) that succeeds by taking chances. Don't look for easy answers in Amongst Friends, because you won't find them. In fact, the film doesn't really offer any solutions. The problems are obvious, as are the tragic consequences of certain actions, but if Weiss has any answers, he doesn't share them with us.
In the final analysis, Amongst Friends works not because it's an expose of upscale, suburban violence and drug use, but because it takes the time to develop its characters so that the events which swirl around them involve us. Emotional honesty is difficult for many films, but this one attains it, and when something devastating happens on screen, the reverberations shake the theater and the people sitting in it.
© 1993 James Berardinelli