Guilty Pleasure Drama — City Hall


Today I'm continuing my summer look at Guilty Pleasure movies with another drama entry.

City Hall (1996)
Starring: Al Pacino, John Cusack, Bridget Fonda, Danny Aiello, Marin Landau, and Richard Schiff
About: Pacino is a great actor. He has been the lead in some iconic films and created some iconic roles. Somehow this film gets over looked a bit. In some ways it was ahead of its time. By now we have plenty of gritty shows and movies that examine the corruption in our political system. But that wasn't exactly the case in 1996. This was a movie that had an interesting mystery to it and some powerful sequences. To this day I think the speech Pacino makes at the funeral of a young shooting victim is one of the best I've seen in a film. But this is also a movie about losing our illusions about the nobility and honesty in politics. We'd like it to be there, but it isn't. That's something we get in our current entertainment — with shows like "House of Cards" and movies like "Ides of March," but it's also something that "City Hall" nailed decades earlier. Cusack is probably best known for his comedic roles, but he shows his dramatic chops with this film, holding his own opposite Pacino. This film didn't win any awards, but it's an engrossing, gritty drama. And it's one many people have over looked.
Rating: R for language and some violence. Enter with caution.

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