The best performance belongs to Vincent D’Onofrio

Movie Review: The Narrows
NY Times, 6.18.09
By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Until it implodes with preposterous plot manipulations, “The Narrows,” directed by François A. Velle, can be appreciated as the film equivalent of a reasonably palatable pasta dish concocted from a familiar recipe and served in a no-frills restaurant.

Its eager-beaver protagonist, Mike Manadoro (Kevin Zegers), is an aspiring photographer from an Italian-American enclave in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, and is torn between making good money transporting mysterious packages for the crooked local kingpin (Titus Welliver) and studying his craft in Manhattan.

........The best performance belongs to Vincent D’Onofrio as Mike’s widowed father, a sanitation worker turned neighborhood bookie who is living on workers’ compensation after an accident. The movie, adapted by Tatiana Blackington from Tim McLoughlin’s crime novel “Heart of the Old Country,” sabotages Mr. D’Onofrio’s performance with a final plot contrivance that is as cute as it is unconvincing.
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2TheAdvocate.com, 6.19.09
by John Wirt

'The Narrows' is familiar story with authentic ring

A contemporary drama set between the contrasting territories of Brooklyn and Manhattan, The Narrows follows a familiar story about a character who strives to escape his humble beginnings.

Mike Manadoro lives with his widower father, Vinny, in Bay Ridge, a working-class Italian neighborhood. Mike’s dad is a retired sanitation worker living on disability. Vinny supplements his disability benefits by being a bookie, a job that requires him to pay protection money to the mob.

The Narrows, a modestly budgeted independent film being released today in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, Baton Rouge and several other cities, stars Kevin Zegers (Transamerica, The Jane Austen Book Club and Dawn of the Dead) as Mike, a young man who wants to be a professional photographer. Vincent D’Onofrio co-stars as Vinny, the father who doesn’t understand his creative son and can’t afford to send him to college.

......Handsome young leading man Zegers gets his earnest artist and good-fellow-in-training across, but it’s screen veteran D’Onofrio, shuffling around on a cane, mumbling and musing about his often disappointing life, who stealthily steals the picture.
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