Hey, everyone. “Moriarty” here.

Robert Davi’s been a fairly constant presence in film for most of the time I’ve been a film fan. And, appropriately for a kid who watched a ton of TV as a seven, eight, nine year old, Davi moved from theater into TV right around those years for me. I didn't know he was trained by Stella Adler. I didn't appreciate that he was part of the New York theater scene. All I knew is that he was one of those guys who I started recognizing on show after show after show. Now that Toshi’s met Davi, I’m going to blow his mind by showing him an episode of THE INCREDIBLE HULK where Davi appears... WITH THE HULK! It’ll have more impact than showing him a LOU GRANT, I bet. He was omnipresent on TV for a while. Didn’t matter what show you watched, chances are he’d show up at some point.

For ‘80s kids, his appearance in THE GOONIES marked his emergence as an icon. RAW DEAL. ACTION JACKSON. DIE HARD. LICENCE TO KILL. WISEGUY. PREDATOR 2. He worked in the ‘90s in a ton of movies, but very few you’d remember, the curse of the working character actor. Davi’s shorthand for “bad guy” in a certain kind of film, or “FBI agent” or “some variation on a tough guy with a gun”. In recent years, he’s done some work in the videogame world, and he’s got a pretty great track record so far... like GRAND THEFT AUTO: VICE CITY and HALO 2 and HALO 3. And with his appearance in AN AMERICAN CAROL and in various op-ed opportunities over the last year or so, Davi’s been a very outspoken conservative spokesman.

He’s also a friend of a friend, and a longtime resident of Northridge, the San Fernando Valley suburb where I bought a house last year. My friend told me that Davi was a huge proponent of Northridge, always ready to turn people on to its charms, and sure enough, when I first moved here, my buddy passed my phone number along to Davi. He called me one morning to tell me about schools and restaurants and cigar stores in the area. It’s always a trip to be woken up by a Bond villain to discuss pre-schools and the fine points of Italian delis, and we talked about getting together for lunch at some point soon.

In typical LA fashion, a full year went by before that actually happened, and in the meantime, Davi finished a film that he co-wrote and directed and went to a number of festivals with it, and then finally got a distributor to release it, starting November 14th in New York, and then nationwide on November 21st. And when we finally set a time for me and my wife and Toshi to join Robert for a Saturday afternoon lunch at the deli that he claimed was the best in LA, I sat down to check out the film at an afternoon screening at Dolby.

It’s hard to put THE DUKES in a simple genre box, but if I had to compare it to anything, it would be Bill Forsyth’s profoundly underrated BREAKING IN, a 1989 comedy starring Burt Reynolds and Casey Siemaszko with a script by John Sayles. That was a film about a relationship between an aging safecracker and a young guy who wants to learn the business, and although the plots aren’t especially similar, there’s a vibe to BREAKING IN that made it a film I still think about 20 years later, a human, wounded quality to the comedy that made it stick. I think THE DUKES has that same sort of quality, and a lot of that is because of the easy chemistry between Danny (Davi) and his co-stars, George (Chazz Palminteri) and Lou (Peter Bogdanovich). Davi gives himself a really meaty central role where he’s the guy who holds everyone else together even when things are tough on him. He’s very old-world charming in the film. I love that Bogdanovich has become an actor on such a frequent basis in recent years, much like Sidney Pollack did, and for the same reason: he’s really good onscreen. And Palminteri looks like he’s having more fun than usual, particularly given the way his character spends most of his energy chasing big girls. BIG girls. Whole-heartedly and without hesitation. And he treats each and every one of them as well as he can. He goes out of his way to make them feel good. Elya Baskin (you probably know him as Peter Parker’s Russian landlord in the SPIDER-MAN sequels or maybe from 2010 or MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON) is Murph, another friend, part of the “big job”, and Bruce Weitz does a spirited short appearance in the film as Toulio, the safecracker-turned-Hollywood-technical-expert who teaches these guys how to open a safe.

And why would they do that? The “why” should be the best part of any heist film. That’s an important part of the audience’s investment in the heist, and without a great “why,” it’s all just plot mechanics. Here, we’re dealing with guys who are sort of hitting their expiration date and not handling it well, especially since they were on top once. They were a doo-wop group in the ‘50s, and they’ve been aching to regain that glory ever since. Instead, Danny and George both work in a restaurant for Aunt Vee (Miriam Margolyes), and occasionally Lou tries to find them some sort of nostalgia gig or, as in the beginning of the film, an endorsement deal that puts their music back in front of people, even if it’s not the way they want it to happen.

When they stumble over a lead on 35 pounds of gold that sound like an easy score, they find themselves considering something that would have seemed outrageous ten years earlier. Desperation starts to set in, and they realize that the only way they’re ever going to get their piece of the American Dream at this late date is by stealing it. It’s sort of a misdirect, though, because the heist isn’t what really interests Davi. He’s more concerned with painting a portrait of guys at the wrong end, chronologically speaking, of having your dreams come true. I know that just-this-side-of 40, I’m not where I wanted to be, or where I expected to be, or where I hoped to be, and that’s one of those things you either make peace with or it destroys you. It can poison everything, and THE DUKES picks these guys up at the moment where they’re having to decide which way it’s all going to go. Are they going to do something about the place they find themselves in their lives, or are they just going to accept it as inevitable and spend the rest of their lives miserable?

I’m hoping that after seeing this, directors think of different ways they can cast Davi. He and Palminteri have a great rapport onscreen together, and there’s a warmth that we don’t see in most of the tough guy roles Davi’s been called on to play over the years. There’s a lovely scene where he’s fishing with his kid, making the moment last as long as he can before taking the boy home to his estranged ex-wife (played by THE OFFICE’s Melora Hardin), and it’s just very quiet and sweet and real. There’s something about those moments where you and your son are able to shut out the clock and just sit together, talking... it’s rare for anyone to be able to take that time, and sometimes even if you do get one of those moments, you don’t appreciate it until later. Here, Danny’s obviously very aware of what each one of these moments is worth, and he savors it. Davi packs a lot of significance into the smallest gestures, and it’s impressive to watch him use acting muscles no one ever asks him to use. When the Dukes finally do perform together again, Davi sings lead, and it’s amother one of those “holy shit” moments. The guy’s got real pipes, and he’s a credible anchor for a doo-wop group. Who would have expected that? It’s like Sorvino opening up and belting out some opera in REPO: THE GENETIC OPERA... we’re so used to seeing something particular from these actors that it’s a shock to see them do something this new.

When I sat down at the San Carlo Italian Deli with Davi on a Saturday afternoon, I was accompanied by the lovely Mrs. Moriarty and by Toshi. Davi had told me repeatedly that this place was going to be an instant favorite for us, and that he’d make sure we knew what was good there. As soon as he walked in, it was obvious that he’s been going there for years, and that he’s close to the family that owns and operates it. He was calling out orders like “gimme some of those things” and “that one dish I like”, and they didn’t hesitate at all. We sampled their calzone, some eggplant parm (some of the best I’ve had in LA), a deli sandwich, focaccia that was fresh from the oven, and even some of their pizza. My wife flipped out for the fresh cannoli she had for dessert, and for a while, I thought Toshi might explode from how much of the food he sampled.

As we thoroughly enjoyed the food, Davi and I talked for almost two hours about his experience taking THE DUKES to festivals around the world, about his career as a character actor, and about politics. The presidential race was in full gear at that point, and Davi’s got no worries laying his own beliefs out there. I don’t think he’s technically a John Bircher, but I think that’s a good description of his basic view of the world. And even if I don’t echo Davi’s political stance, I enjoyed talking to him about it because of how clearly he was able to articulate why he holds the values he does, and because he never made me feel like I was under attack for whatever views I might hold. It was a rare moment of enjoyable discourse during a political season that made me really resent both sides of the aisle (and even the notion that there are “sides” to the United States) for their conduct and their partisan ideologies. If THE DUKES does well, it’s obvious that Davi has more stories to tell, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see him step up and make some very overtly political films in the future. He’s got one biopic he mentioned that would be enormously controversial, and I’m curious to see if he’s able to ever raise financing for it. In the meantime, as this very small film with a very big heart starts to open in limited release in the next few weeks, check it out. It’s not flashy filmmaking, but there’s a lot of control to the way the film makes use of its limited budget and its very simple story. Here’s the trailer for you to check out, courtesy of the fine folks over at Trailer Addict:

And now, I’ve just got a few more AFI articles to finish, and then I can finally get to that Spike Jonze interview about WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE or that QUANTUM OF SOLACE review or my KICK-ASS set visit report. Lots of good stuff coming in the weeks ahead.

Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles