AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

jjnxn-1 Cassavetes scores a bullseye with this wonderfully gritty crime drama. Shot when New York City was still a seedy mess before the beginning of, at least in part, its renewal the film has a very noirish grungy feel that add immeasurably to the power of its impact. There are no lovely shots of Central Park or sweeping buildings, you can feel the grime and closeness of the city moving in on Gloria and her young charge. That's all fine and dandy but what makes this story go, and the film would be nothing without her, is the magnificent Gena Rowlands in a diamond hard characterization of a been around gun moll who has absolutely no problem doing whatever is necessary to maintain her safety and that of the young boy whose care she has unexpectedly become responsible for. Always a superior talent she is simply amazing in this. The film itself is entertaining but watch this to see one of the most talented actresses ever ply her trade.

bregund Follow the tough-as-nails Gloria as she hopscotches all over NYC with a kid in tow, from subway to train to taxi to bus. This is the most non-linear film I've ever seen, it plays out as more of an experimental film than a mainstream piece. That the character of Gloria is the focus of the camera in almost every single scene implies that this is more of a character study than a mob movie, an idea confirmed by its title. I was startled to realize how similar this film is to the Pope of Greenwich Village, with the same kind of rambling, non-linear storytelling style.The most fascinating thing about this film is that Gloria is so guarded that you can never read her motives...any moment something startling could happen. When a car full of mobsters pulls up and demands that she hand over Phil, the boy, Gloria hauls out a piece and blows them back to the stone age; it's a scene that is completely unexpected, and you find yourself admiring her. In another scene, they journey to a diner and sit down for a meal, then she gets up and begins talking to a group of men at a table in the background, and you suddenly realize that she didn't just randomly choose this restaurant, she came to make a deal with the mobsters; it's so unexpected, nothing in this film is what you expect it to be, there is a surprise around every corner. Cassavetes apparently wanted to keep you guessing, and one can imagine him dismissing cliché after cliché from the screenplay until it was completely original.Gena Rowlands is marvelous; with her poker face, she calmly deals with one crisis after another, casually solving her problems with her gun or her intellect, which she honed on the streets after years of being involved with the mob. As the film progresses, her weary cynicism gradually erodes to affection for the little boy she initially disliked. This film is refreshingly original.

moonspinner55 Gena Rowlands is forthright, appropriately gritty, and generally quite marvelous playing Gloria Swenson, a former mobster's girl in present day New York City who is suddenly saddled with a little Puerto Rican boy, orphaned after his parents were killed by the mob before they could inform to the FBI. Rowlands (who deservedly received an Oscar nomination for her work) trades salty quips with the kid, busts chops, and handles a gun like a pro--and she wakes the audience up every time she gets a showy scene. Unfortunately, this script by director John Cassavetes has absolutely nowhere to go after its second act, dragging on for an extra 30 minutes. Though "Gloria" was certainly one of the filmmaker's more commercial projects, a pretentious air hangs about the film, giving it an overall feeling of stilted artificiality. Remade by Sidney Lumet in 1999 with Sharon Stone in the lead. ** from ****

jzappa You start with flinty, streetsmart gangster types, cross their paths with a little kid, put them in urban peril, and then you squeeze how things stack up for sentimentality, suspense and humor. It's a charming idea, and perhaps that's why this could be considered John Cassavetes's most conventional film. It tells the story of a gangster's girlfriend who goes on the run with a young boy who is being pursued by the mob for information he doesn't even know he might have. But he wants to tell the story his own way, obstructing every convention we would normally expect, instilling a realist perspective in how we follow the movie, making the pay-off that much more worthwhile. Cassavetes didn't intend to direct his script. He just wanted to sell the story to Columbia Pictures. But once his wife Gena Rowlands was asked to play Gloria, she obliged Cassavetes to direct it.This underdog crime drama is particularly absorbing in its first hour, and ignites with a great beginning. We follow one character, it leads to another character, perspectives are interknit, the situation builds and Cassavetes has complete control over what we know and expect, all in spite of the all-too-familiar premise, which is then set for the rest of the movie, which is a cat-and-mouse hunt per the seedier locales of New York and New Jersey. He makes the threat so real that when the two key characters evade tangible danger, we still feel the tension whenever they round a corner, get in and out of cabs, and other such ordinary actions. He doesn't let on that unwanted company is present. It just happens. There is one scene that lasts for quite awhile before we realize, after Rowlands's title character does, that unwanted company has been there the entire time.In an Oscar-nominated performance, Rowlands is expectedly the beautiful lead actress, but she sports a kind of masculine quality, creating a much more dense dynamic when she, afraid of her maternal instincts, finds them overpowering her lifelong self-preservation, and begrudgingly protects the boy. As the film progresses, however, she becomes more sincere in her protection, and integrates her love with her seasoned familiarity with how to stay alive in this town. In one creative take on the Fine, I Don't Need You Anyway scene, she asks a bartender, "There's reasons I can't turn and just look, but is there a little kid headed in here or across the street or whatever?" She drives her role with such honest irritable liveliness. Yet the kid is also well cast. He was a conspicuous little boy named John Adames with dark hair, big eyes and a way of trucking his dialogue as if confronting you to adjust a single word. It all works because everything about his character, the way he dresses, talks, revolts and moves, serves the naive notion that he is older, smarter and cooler than he is.Cassavetes has a natural keenness for guilelessly unadorned location shooting in that he never plans, stages, waits on the weather or time of day, or hires extras or stunt drivers. Note how passers-by in the distance will often look on at the characters, whether Gloria has pulled a gun in a public place or not. Wherever the characters need to be, that place is in real time, as dirty, scuzzy and purely of the film's era as it would've normally been. There's a shabby flophouse where the clerk tells Gloria, "Just pick a room. They're all open." There are bus stations, back alleys, dimly lit hallways, and bars that open at dawn. And his occasional action scenes are so thrilling because of their surprise.For once, Cassavetes doesn't stage indefinitely extensive scenes of dialogue wherein the actors indulge in their own view of their characters' unraveling. But I miss that. As I've already said, I am very impressed with how tightly he mounts suspense from the very beginning, how Gloria and the kid zip from cab to bus to cab to street to hotel to cab and so on. But regardless of how doggedly realistic he is in his portrayal of a recycled movie plot, he still relies upon that plot rather than the impositions of his characters flexing their wings.