Touted `Little Odessa' Is A Grim Gangster Flick

----------------------------------------------------------------- Movie review

XX "Little Odessa," with Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Maximilian Schell, Vanessa Redgrave, Moira Kelly. Directed and written by James Gray. Metro Cinemas. "R" - Restricted because of violence, language, sexuality. -----------------------------------------------------------------

This movie arrived at the Seattle International Film Festival last spring trailing a long list of endorsements, including prizes at the Venice Film Festival and raves from East Coast critics, who have been almost unanimous in their praise for its 25-year-old director, James Gray.

Almost no one I know could stand it. Perhaps it was just that it arrived in the midst of a series of look-alike gangster movies, too many Tarantino wannabes, but it was greeted here with a mixture of shell shock and battle fatigue.

At the same time, festival audiences had no trouble warming up to such crime-drenched pictures as "The Usual Suspects," "Coldblooded," "Aventurera" and "To Die For," all of them vastly more entertaining than Gray's monotonously bleak attempt to create a contemporary tragedy.

Glum and self-conscious but well-acted, "Little Odessa" is the story of a hit man named Joshua (Tim Roth) whose mother (Vanessa Redgrave) is dying in his old Russian-Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood.

Edward Furlong is the younger brother who worships him, and Maximilian Schell is the father who threw Joshua out years before, fearing that his brother would imitate him. Moira Kelly is Joshua's old girlfriend, who lives to regret the renewal of their relationship.

Joshua is back in town to murder an Arab jeweler, while avoiding the Mafia thugs who have an old score to settle with him. His brother finds him, brings him back into the family and unintentionally forces a confrontation with their father, whose affair with another woman is eventually used against him.

It all ends badly, though not quite in the way you might expect. While the ending does surprise, Gray takes such pains to set it up that it seems more contrived than tragic. Much of the movie, including the ostentatious use of music and sound effects and Tom Richmond's ultra-grim cinematography, is simply guilty of trying too hard for effect.

It's not a particularly strong vehicle for Redgrave or Kelly, although they try to give dimension to their one-note roles, or Roth, who is required to be almost comically morose and uncommunicative. Coming off the most colorful role of his career - the vicious heavy in "Rob Roy" - Roth looks especially pallid here.

Still, "Little Odessa" may be a must for fans of Furlong, who brings a piercing intensity to his role, and Schell, whose ability to express world-weary disgust is especially well-used. They almost find a way to let the audience care about this down-and-out family.