Red Hook Dumber

 A dear friend from Brooklyn recommends this obscure '90s film with a great cast.

THE SEARCH FOR ONE-EYE JIMMY (1996) (B-minus) - You probably had to be there. This no-budget Brooklyn farce is what it would be like if Spike Lee were white and had flunked out of film school.

Made in 1993 and released in 1996 to near-universal indifference (box office haul: $71,000) this slapdash production boasts what is, in retrospect, an all-star cast of actors before they made it big. The lead, Hold McCallany (not an all-star) plays Les, a neighborhood guy who went to film school out west and returns to shoot a documentary about his old Red Hook haunts. He stumbles on a hook -- "One-Eye" Jimmy Hoyt has gone missing -- and drags a cameraman around to interview a series of eccentrics who make up Jimmy's family and friends.

The true all-star of the film is Michael Badalucco (TV's "The Practice") as Joe Head (he's got a big head, you see), who accompanies Les on the caper. Badalucco is deadpan and earnest while idiots run amok. Some of his jokes are wonderfully dry. He's proud to be living independently now because he moved out of his parents' home -- and into his grandparents' house, where his grandfather hits on Joe's dates. Late in the film he goes in to talk to a crush and tells a pal, "Don't tell Grandpa; I lose all my women to him." 

The rest of the cast involves a lineup of who's-who indie favorites, most of whom are slumming in underwritten roles. They include:

• Samuel L. Jackson as a mentally unstable Vietnam veteran.
• Steve Buscemi as the missing man's Budweiser-swilling brother.
• John Turturro in a Sammy Maudlin afro as a homophobic disco dancer who pretends the '70s never ended.
• Brother Nicholas Turturro as Junior, a flashy street character (he wears gold-rimmed "subscription" glasses) who can't stop stealing cars, usually the same one repeatedly.
• Sister Aida Turturro (completing the hat trick) as a shady fortune teller.
• Anne Meara as Jimmy's weepy mother, beset by a husband who responds to stress like this with chronic priapism.
• Jennifer Beals as Ellen, Joe Head's crush. She draws a sketch of Jimmy that looks nothing like the guy. But Ellen is touted for her skills because she teaches art at Riker's Island.
• Tony Sirico as a creepy loan shark (essentially an audition for the role of Paulie Walnuts on "The Sopranos").
• And, when the missing Jimmy finally shows up at the end of the movie, he is played by Sam Rockwell, in one of his earliest roles.

Most of these roles are the epitome of thankless. Most of the actors (aside from Badalucco) embrace the absurdity but seem adrift trying to find their motivation or substance in their dialogue. The film aspires to be wacky but comes off more scatterbrained, like an old "Bowery Boys" romp directed by Tom DiCillo. But, like Joe Head, it's not without a dull charm. The gags seem intentionally stupid, in the style of "Beavis and Butt-Head," right down to the silly climactic explanation for why Jimmy went missing. 

The movie leans on the quirks of its characters, and some of the gags seem out of date. Joe Head has a habit of stuffing chicken wings in his pocket. Steve Buscemi's character makes his money using a Polaroid camera to take pictures of people next to a cardboard cut-out of a professional wrestler. Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini chases Junior around the neighborhood to retrieve his car, over and over again, like the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote. Writer-Director Sam Henry Kass offers up what is almost certainly the worst car chase scene ever captured on film (hopefully intentionally so). 

Other bits land gently and obliquely. When the mother examines the artist's rendering of Jimmy, she asks Ellen to add more broken capillaries on Jimmy's nose. When an unseen car tosses a ransom note (wrapped around a brick) at the feet of a group of knuckleheads, the note is incomplete, and then a few seconds later another brick/note comes flying in, this one explaining the drop-off procedure for the money.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the movie, though, is the obvious lack of budget. (It was apparently $75,000. Did they spend it all on the talent?) The streets of Brooklyn are almost devoid of people besides the named characters. You'll find more extras in post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies. Only a few scenes here show other people or even cars. It's like a '40s movie shot on a cheap backlot. (After I wrote that, I read an interview with Kass, who said of the neighborhood back then before gentrification, "We shot there because it looked like the end of the world.")

Kass had a short career, which included writing an episode of "Seinfeld." He debuted with this colossal bomb and likely never recovered. He hasn't had a credit since 2010.  (Here's the interview from around that time.) If anything, he deserves to have this quirky little film develop a cult status. It could be the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" of meathead movies.