Kurdt’s review published on Letterboxd:
A miasma of despair and angst. This is a bevy of relentless punches to the head so often that you’re seeing reds greens and blues pulsing through your skull so fast that the whites of your eyes turn black. It’s apt that the intense colours are not artificial within the story, they come from the neon lights of the city or the darkness of a cramped apartment, surroundings influencing proceedings, as this is as much a New York City film as it is a heist film, or a character study or whatever you want to call it. It’s about the people that have fallen through the cracks but rather than look inside themselves, they blame society and look for a quick fix solution. The kind of humans I’d call “gum on the shoe people”, they stick to you and you can’t shake them off. Destined to ruin not only their own lives but others too. That much of the second half of this takes place in an amusement park is perfect as it adds to the heightened sense of reality, as while this is a film about relatively realistic characters there’s also a constant hyperreal aspect, with senses charged up to the max. The bright lights exacerbate the brutal darkness.
Connie is an exceptionally interesting character, as he clearly sees himself as wronged by society, and even more explicitly, a good person, and “better” than everybody else as he distinctly mentions late in the film. Yet he’s clearly not a good person, and I don’t just mean because he commits robbery or anything like that. There’s a moment towards the middle of the film when he and Crystal are watching Cops on TV, and the cops get called to the scene of this woman threatening to harm herself, and they proceed to throw her to the ground and she falls on a knife, stabbing herself. Connie then says “turn it off, I don’t want to see how they justify this”. It’s a small moment, but when framed within Connie’s later actions it proves that this is a man with thorough cognitive dissonance. Because later he uses the term “faggot” as a slur, takes advantage of his white privilege by letting the cops twice arrest two black people instead of him; one, the security guard who Connie hideously beats to a pulp before pretending to be the guard himself when they show up, and even worse, Crystal, who is judged as a threat simply because of her skin yet Connie lets the cops take her away to save his own ass. This is the last we see of her in the film.
Basically, this is a man that sees himself as a good person constantly in the right, who’s ostensibly pissed at corruption and oppression, but in fact uses those same devices to aid his own life without giving a shit about the destruction he leaves in his wake. It’s not just through racism either, as he takes advantage of the poor (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the mentally handicapped (his brother) and the naïve (Ray). The film implies this is nurtured by his environment; a city of corruption (heavy Scorsese vibes here, plus he’s thanked in the credits), constant TV screens filled by violence thereby normalising it, etc. Thus while Connie can look at Cops and be sickened by oppression and brutality, he’s just as polluted by the normalisation of violence and various -isms that he uses them to his advantage in his own life.
It’s what makes the scenes with Nick at the clinic(?) so affecting, especially at the end, as there is proof that there are good people out there, it’s just that too often the people looking to help are drowned out by people only looking out for themselves. I think maybe if there’s something to take from this film other than being an acid trip of vitriolic hatred, it’s that to be a good person, you simply have to be a good person. Connie positions himself as good and absolutely sees himself as a victim forced to sink lower than he’d like through circumstance, but it’s not the words you say or the things you think, it’s the things you do. I take hope from the final scene with Nick, because he’s finally getting the help he needs, from people not there to take advantage of him and manipulate him, but from good people trying to improve other’s lives. Hopefully the acceptance that he’s been misled and mentally abused by his brother constantly can give him the opportunity to push the bad out his life and embrace the good. Which is a hopeful thought to come from a film so hopeless. Now for a shower to wash this stench off.