Stars Michael Angarano, Liam Hemsworth, and Dwayne Johnson. Directed by Dito Montiel from a script by Adam Mazer. Critic’s grade: B (reviewed at the Gasparilla Film Festival)
It’s 1982, in Queens, N.Y., and two twentysomething friends are desperate to exit their dead-end lives. Mild-mannered guy Chris (Liam Hemsworth), of Greek-American descent, is rejected for a spot with the NYPD police academy, his lifelong dream of being a cop crushed because of a teenage dope-smoking bust at a Black Sabbath concert, an arrest for which longtime pal Eddie (Michael Angarano) is to blame.
Chris’s dad, a cop in his native Greece now permanently under the thumb of small-time Greek hood Spyro (Chris Diamantopoulos), is furious at Eddie, a live wire, motormouth kid. As funny and unpredictable as he is dangerous, Eddie spends his days screwing up at various odd jobs, including the local diner, and harassing neighborhood girls.
Dito Montiel, who made his impressive directing debut with 2006’s “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints,” adapted from his own memoir, knows this ethnic-stew milieu, and gets it right with “Empire State,” based on a real-life heist that netted upwards of $8 million, half of which reportedly was never recovered. Montiel effectively creates the gritty feel — graffiti-covered trains, groups of teen girls with big hair and short shorts, neighborhood moms gossiping and hanging out in lawn chairs at an inner-city garden, tiny living rooms with plastic-covered couches — by, surprisingly enough, largely shooting in New Orleans.
When Chris is hired as a security guard at an armored car company, he can’t help but wonder what it would take to make away with the multimillions kept in bags stashed in a poorly secured storage room at his new job. Eddie, a loose cannon with looser lips, easily makes the leap from fantasy to action, pushing his friend to make a plan to rob the place.
Montiel and screenwriter Adam Mazer (“Breach”), who doubtless have taken some cues from Martin Scorsese movies, have assembled a tough little crime thriller that mostly achieves its modest goals, effectively bringing viewers into this period piece about two hapless underdogs and their cat-and-mouse game with a suspicious NYPD detective; the latter is effectively portrayed by Dwayne Johnson in a rather one-dimensional role.
Montiel, too, elicits a first-rate performance from Angarano, as the manic Eddie, a character who absolutely dominates every scene he’s in; wiry and jittery, he nearly brings to mind the young Robert De Niro of “Mean Streets.”
Trouble is, “Empire State,” littered with several violent and unexpected murders, tries to cover too much ground for its own good. The story additionally touches on the friends’ dealing with local thugs (including Jerry Ferrara), a drug deal gone wrong, another group’s attempted robbery of the armory, and Chris’s almost-romance with sweet and friendly waitress Nancy, played by Emma Roberts in a role that looks as if it were trimmed way back. There are also scenes with various officials, including then-U.S. attorney Rudy Giuliani (Dan Triandiflou), who conclude that organized crime families are responsible for the heist.
Still, it’s a fascinating tale that makes for a mostly engaging film on its own terms, livened by the energy and unpredictability of Eddie and several other characters whose desperation takes them in oft-surprising directions. You’ve heard about the largest cash robbery in U.S. history (news footage opens the film)? Here’s the quirky story behind the story.