Homicide – Mordkommission (1991)

Homicide – Mordkommission: Directed by David Mamet. With Joe Mantegna, William H. Macy, Vincent Guastaferro, J.J. Johnston. A Jewish homicide detective investigates a seemingly minor murder and falls in with a Zionist group as a result.

“I found the film as riveting and disturbing as most of the other reviewers, but Iu0026#39;d like to comment here on David Mametu0026#39;s writing style. As one of the earlier reviews points out, Mamet is much admired by the literati, and as another says, he is studied in film schools. So I may be going out on a limb, but I am a lot less impressed with his writing than most.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003enDavid Mamet started as a playwright, and he still writes with the theater in mind, even when he writes for movies or TV. I first noticed this a year or so ago when watching a rerun of Hill Street Blues for which heu0026#39;d written the script. The show had many first-rate TV writers, and there was nothing incongruous in the idea that a celebrated playwright would write an episode. But his episode, while intense, involving, and philosophical in the approved Mamet style, proved out of place as an episode in a long-running series with established characters. Mametu0026#39;s Hill Street bunch lost familiar character traits and gained others common to nearly all the dramatis personae of his plays. The cops all talked like Mamet characters, had macho-philosophical Mamet dialogues, faced Mamet moments of truth.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWell, here is Homicide, another cop show in full length movie form, and once again his puppets talk like Mamet characters, rather than like distinguishable individuals. These roles are his own creations, so he isnu0026#39;t confronted with a series-watcheru0026#39;s expectations, but that hasnu0026#39;t made them more believable as people. His dialogue has a sameness about it that suggests he doesnu0026#39;t really listen to the way people talk. (Again, I realize this is a minority view: critics are always writing about the u0026quot;gritty realismu0026quot; of his charactersu0026#39; speeches.)u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eListen to the dialogue from one of the NYPD Blue episodes written by David Milch. (I choose Milch not only because heu0026#39;s one of Blueu0026#39;s best writers [and co-producer, of course] but also because he wrote many of the best Hill Street Blues episodes around the time Mamet wrote his contribution.) The characters are varied, and their choice of words tells the listener more about them as individuals with every line they speak. Mamet characters tend to tell you, not what they are like as people, but what Mamet wants you to think about them. Again and again during Homicide I found myself thinking: u0026quot;no, he wouldnu0026#39;t say thatu0026quot;, or even u0026quot;does anybody really talk that way?u0026quot;u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003enAm I saying David Milch is a better writer than David Mamet? I think I am, for realistic media like TV and film, anyway. The theater, as an inherently artifical medium, can absorb and even thrive upon artificiality in its dialogue. But TV and movies have different demands, and I donu0026#39;t think David Mamet meets them very well.”