Lonely Hearts opened this month in New York City and Los Angeles but, with its downbeat story and mixed reviews, did not get a wider theatrical release. However, the city's film commissioner, Todd Roobin, arranged to get a print for a one-time only screening at the San Marco Theatre Thursday. Interest in that was so strong that the theater's owner, David Blue, contacted the film's distributor and paid to get a print so he could show it for an entire week.
"We were getting indudated with calls," he said. Lonely Hearts will play at 9 p.m.
through the week (except on Tuesday) and at 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
This movie review of Lonely Hearts is adopted from a story written by Matt Soergel after the film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York last year. Lonely Hearts (***) is indeed dark, but it's also an ambitious and literate film, well acted from top to bottom and quite evocative in its portrayal of America just after World War II. John Travolta and James Gandolfini are typically solid in their roles as Long Island homicide detectives, while Salma Hayek and Jared Leto could generate some buzz from their showier, chilling portrayals of serial killers who prey on vulnerable women.
Filmmaker Todd Robinson doesn't try to duck violence or the consequences. He said the film is meant to show how corrosive violence can be on those exposed to it, as well as their families. Its opening credits scene, set to jaunty period music, cuts between a woman preparing for an anniversary dinner and bloody crime photos from that time.
And as the opening credits end, a woman commits suicide by leaning over a bathtub and pulling the trigger of a gun she holds to her head. That sets the tone for a tale of psychotic obsession, guilt and murder. It has some humor, mostly in the fractious relationship between detectives played by Gandolfini and Scott Caan.
But for the most part the mood is bleak, as befits a story about a troubled cop tracking serial killers. It's based on the real-life story of the so-called Lonely Hearts killers, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, lovers who in the years after World War II posed as brother and sister while Martinez seduced and swindled lonely women. That eventually led to murder after murder, several of which are re-created in graphic detail in the film.
Lonely Hearts functions as both a police procedural and a character study of men of their time who kept their emotions buttoned up. Travolta is homicide detective Elmer C. Robinson, who's based on writer-director Robinson's grandfather of the same name.
He doesn't say much, at least compared to other voluble characters Travolta has played. Leto and Hayek play the killers, who share an obsessive sexual relationship that leads to jealousy and murder. Both are up to the roles, but it's Leto who's likely to get most attention - his womanizer is a twitchy, skinny cad with a balding head that he covers with an elaborate toupee as he glibly sweet-talks vulnerable women.
It's the most accomplished of the more high-profile films shot on the First Coast in recent years. ~~~Jacksonville: You wanted Lonely Hearts, and now you have it. The film comes to the San Marco Theatre today and will run for a week before the arrival of Spider-Man 3 on Friday, May 4.
Lonely Hearts opened this month in New York and Los Angeles but, with its downbeat story and mixed reviews, did not get a wider theatrical release. However, the city's film commissioner, Todd Roobin, arranged to get a print for a one-time only screening at the San Marco on Thursday. Interest in that was so strong that the theater's owner, David Blue, contacted the film's distributor and paid to get a print so he could show it for an entire week.
"We were getting inundated with calls," he said. Lonely Hearts will play at 9 p.m.
through the week (except on Tuesday) and at 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
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