| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | City Hall (1996) |
| Director | Harold Becker |
| Writer | Ken Lipper, Paul Schrader, Nicholas Pileggi, Bo Goldman |
| Lead Actor | Al Pacino |
| Cast | Al Pacino, John Cusack, Bridget Fonda, Danny Aiello, Martin Landau |
| Genre | Crime, Drama, Thriller |
| Release Date | February 16, 1996 (United States) |
| Duration | 1h 51m |
| Budget | $40 million |
| Language | English |
| IMDb Rating | 6.2/10 |
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CITY HALL is mainly a moral attack on big-city political corruption, a target that may not be quite outdated but seems somehow less relevant than other forms of public decadence in the 1990’s.
Al Pacino plays John Pappas, a charismatic New York mayor with higher ambitions. His hopes are endangered by a scandal connecting a veteran judge (Martin Landau) known for his honesty and Mob figures friendly to the Brooklyn political boss (Danny Aiello). In this story by Ken Lipper, deputy mayor under Ed Koch, the key investigator is the deputy mayor Pappas’s own young protégé from Louisiana, Kevin Calhoun (John Cusack), who idolizes the mayor but uncovers the truth.
City Hall thus plays a variation on an archetypal story: The son discovers the sins of the father, judges him and makes him quit (a superbly acted Pacino-Cusack confrontation scene). The mayor’s fall is tragic because he’s obviously gifted and caring. But the movie is not as humane or moving as John Ford’s classic in this end of an era political genre, The Last Hurrah (1958).
Cusack’s character is supposedly based on James Carville, but that thought would never occur to you except for all the Cajun jokes in the script. Bridget Fonda is credible as Calhoun’s lawyer friend and coinvestigator, but Aiello (as usual) is especially memorable. A Rodgers and Hammerstein fan, he has a terrific Hudson River scene set to the music of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
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