Hard Times

By Frank Rich

PARADISE ALLEY Directed and Written by Sylvester Stallone

Two movies after Rocky, Sylvester Stallone is down but not out. His new film is not the comeback picture that Stallone needs to recover fully from the debacle of F.I.S.T., but neither is it a complete fail ure. At times Paradise Alley looks like a catastrophe: it is often crudely made, badly acted and unwittingly ridiculous. Yet the film doesn't chase the audience out of the theater, as F.I.S.T. did. Just when the going gets roughest, this crazy movie springs into idiosyncratic, if fleeting life.

As an exercise in egomania, Paradise Alley almost puts Barbra Streisand's A Star Is Born to shame. Besides starring in the film, Stallone wrote the script (from his own novel, no less), directed it and sings the theme song. The plot, far too structurally ambitious for a novice director, is a cynical attempt to cash in on every '40s movie cliche not used in Rocky and most of those that were. Set in 1946, the story tells of three downtrodden brothers who dream of breaking out of Manhattan's impoverished Hell's Kitchen: a lame World War II vet (Armand Assante), a loudmouthed schemer (Stallone) and a dumb but sweet aspiring wrestler (Lee Canalito). As Alice Kramden of TV's The Honeymooners might put it, what we have here are a gimp, a blimp and a simp.

When dealing with bedrock matters of story and character, Paradise Alley is an utter mess. Stallone's two co-stars are blanks on the screen; their personal metamorphoses are too sketchily written and acted to have any impact. The men's love interests (Anne Archer, Joyce Ingalls, Aimee Eccles) are all crassly conceived stereotypes; there is even a hooker with a heart of gold. Whatever credibility exists in the screenplay is soon destroyed by Stallone's direction. Paradise Alley is a cinematic minefield of bizarre transitions, cryptic anecdotes, continuity lapses and mushy dissolves. Despite Laszlo Kovacs' first-rate cinematography and Deborah Beaudet's evocative art direction, much of the film looks like a home movie.

The huge set pieces come off a bit better, especially so in the case of a tumultuous fight scene that parallels the climax of Rocky. But it is really around its fringes that Paradise Alley becomes interesting. Kevin Conway, as a James Cagney-inspired hood, brings savage, roughhouse wit to some incidental barroom scenes. In the expendable role of a has-been black wrestler, Frank McRae is a knockout. Though playing a slow-witted loser without money or friends, this actor retains a delicate sense of dignity. His two brief scenes carry more emotional weight than all the rest of Paradise Alley.

The other worthwhile moments in the movie belong to Stallone. Having abdicated the fighter's role for once, he tries to show what else he can do as an actor. As it turns out, he can be quite funny. There are some hilarious bits in which he fends off real and imagined enemies on New York's mean streets; his performance takes on a violent comic vitality that only rarely spreads to his direction and writing. Like the rest of the film, the star is at his worst when he lays on calculated doses of sentiment and sensitivity; at such times, Stallone seems more in touch with imagined demands of the box office than his own instincts. True, his sloppy side eventually buries the movie, but deep within Paradise Alley you can hear an original comic voice struggling to burst out. -- Frank Rich

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