Remember what it was like to watch Reservoir Dogs or Glengarry, Glen Ross or even Diner for the first time? The common denominator of such films is that Tarantino, Mamet, and Levinson produced such head-spinningly accurate portrayals of the way that men talk to one another. I do not like to promote gender stereotypes and have no interest in perpetuating gender roles, but I am not ashamed to assert that there are times when the thing that we loosely categorize as masculinity gets a bad rap.

Jerry and Tom is yet another film that brilliantly illustrates the incredibly subtle negotiations and manipulative power grabs that characterize the conversations that men are capable of having with one another when they are not distracted by the desire to impress female auditors.

Writer Rick Cleveland demonstrates his rather extraordinary ear for dialogue in this black comedy concerning the apprenticeship of Jerry (Sam Rockwell), who learns how to be a hitman under the tutelage of Tom (Joe Mantegna). The dialogue features a stubborn reliance on repetition that is the hallmark of writers like Mamet and Tarantino (and television's Aaron Sorkin) who know how to make characters talk the way real people do. But more importantly, the characters say the same kinds of profoundly unintelligent things that we say in real life and don't seem to perceive the ironies inherent in their remarks until after they have been delivered.

Those who know the work that Mantegna did in conjunction with Mamet in earlier films will be relieved to learn that he commits to verisimilitude in this role. We don't get the deadpan delivery of lines that sound as if they are being read from cue cards (as in House of Games). Despite Mantegna's presence, Jerry and Tom has more in common with Mamet's remarkable Glengarry, Glen Ross than with any of the Mamet/Mantegna collaborations.

As has been amply demonstrated in recent years, however, an ear for dialogue is not enough to make a film worth watching. Tarantino and Mamet are still as good with dialogue as they ever were, but they seem to have trouble finding subject matter that matches their compositional strengths. Rick Cleveland's story of a young man who learns the 'trade' of killing, though perhaps objectionably reminiscent of La Femme Nikita, is handled with a sense of detachment that comes so reluctantly and unnaturally to Rockwell's Jerry that we cannot help but watch and sympathize.

When Jerry accidentally kills the wrong person on a job, he feels terrible about it and turns to Tom for forgiveness. Tom admits he is angry at his apprentice, particularly since Jerry has killed a beautiful woman, but thinks things over and decides that the only thing to say under the circumstances is, "What's done is done."

The film had already won me over before director Saul Rubinek paid heartwarming homage to the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona. The scene in which Jerry tries to rock his baby back to sleep in his nursery is lifted almost entirely from H.I. McDonough's invasion of the Arizona household for little Nathan. Rubinek even goes so far as to have Rockwell's hair imitate the comically spiky 'do' that Nick Cage sported in Raising Arizona.

Cleveland pays respects of his own to the film Stand By Me in the story that he has Tom tell of a moment that he shared in the wilderness with a deer. Some might say that he is actually alluding directly to Stephen King's The Body, but I would ask them to pay attention to the quiver in Mantegna's voice and to consider whether the writer and director aren't very intentionally trying to take us back to a particular time in cinematic history (the late 80s) when the Coen Brothers and Rob Reiner seemed like the only filmmakers in Hollywood that were doing anything remotely interesting. (The Coens are still with us; it's a shame about Reiner.)

I was born in 1968, and something tells me that Cleveland and Rubinek made this film specifically for me. It celebrates everything good about the films that I was able to appreciate in my late teens. Jerry and Tom uses all of the tricks that we know Hollywood stays away from and stays away from all the tricks that Hollywood uses. The frame narrative (which does an adequate job of tying things up at the end) is unfortunately just a little bit clumsy. In order for it to work, Tom has to rely on Jerry to behave in a level-headed way that is inconsistent with the characteristics he exhibits in the rest of the film. But otherwise, this is thoughtful, imaginative, and compelling entertainment.



Recommended: Yes