TEN BENNY (1995) **1/2 This feels very real. It doesn't have the adrenaline explosions of, oh, you know, Goodfellas , but there's supposed to be a Neil Simon/"Wonder Years" absence of edge to parts of it. Which is good, even the Godfather was a little kid, somewhere. Everyone looks right, acts right, maybe a coming of age a little bit too late, happens everywhere all the time. It would be the same story (but duller) set in the corporate world: ambitious young man rolls on one a little bit too big, gets outmaneuvered by experience, the friendly levels are far below, and all of a sudden it's bwah you in a heep o' trouble, bwah. Adrien Brody is just such an ambitious young man himself, but this is one that went his way. The character he depicts so well, to varying levels of sophistication; that arrogant young man with enough charm to get away with it, because he lights up the lives he staggers through; here beaten but unbowed. Fuhgettaboutit. But they gave him the cinematic milieu to allow his strengths to shine undistracted and there are other outstanding performances, most notably for me Frank Vincent, but Tony Gillan and Sybil Temtchine, too. If the film itself lacks the staggering ambition of its centerpiece, that's right too, because of who's kind of saying it, because of where it's coming from. I'm not from there but I'm from some place else, and there's an everyman Vanity Fair to it, too.
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