FRESH KILLS - Mark Reviews Movies

Fresh Kills, Quiver Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 13, 2024

Looking at a typical mafia story from an uncommon angle, Fresh Kills imagines the world of organized crime in terms of a more traditional definition of family. Basically, this is the story of the daughter of a mob crime boss, who knows there's something different about her father and his friends but can't quite figure out what that is.

She has heard the mumblings of rumors and more overt gossip, of course—that her dad uses money and power to get things and special treatment for his family, that it's strange how he occasionally disappears for business trips without contacting anyone, that he's not an honest man. What's a girl, who only sees her father smiling at the dinner table and jovially holding court at big parties and comforting a nephew whose father has died, supposed to do with this kind of contradictory information?

For Rose (Emily Bader), the answer is to bottle it up as if nothing is wrong, even though she increasingly suspects that there is something quite wrong with how her dad earns a living and how the rest of the family simply goes along with it. Writer/director Jennifer Esposito creates such a suffocating atmosphere with this film that it doesn't need the usual stuff of mafia stories to be compelling. Indeed, it's about a different kind of violence than we might anticipate from such material, because it's entirely emotional and, as Rose's suspicions become denial, self-inflicted on her own mind.

The story begins on Staten Island in the late 1980s, as a young Rose (played by Anatasia Veronica Lee) plays with her older sister Connie (played by Taylor Madeline Hand as a child and Odessa A'zion as a teen and young adult). Everything seems normal, as the sisters' mother Francie (Esposito) gets them ready for a get-together at the family's lavish home. Joe LaRusso (Domenick Lombardozzi), the father, returns home, happy to see his girls.

Nothing is amiss, until the sisters hide in a car parked in the garage and overhear their father talking about their uncle with someone. The talk is all business-like and vague, but Rose spots a pistol tucked into the waist of her father's pants. It's possible Joe sees his daughter witnessing all of this, but if he does, the father doesn't say a word about it—even after the uncle ends up dead in what's officially reported as a suicide.

Years pass. The sisters are now teenagers. Rose is quiet and observant, while Connie is outgoing and has an issue with her temper, to put it lightly. Who knows what the older sister knows? That air of uncertainty is important here, if only because it emphasizes the claustrophobic feeling of Rose's existence. She can talk to her sister and mother about anything, one would imagine since they're so close, but they never talk about the one thing that could be on the front of all of their minds.

Is that why Connie can become so violent, as she is when a girl from her school accuses her of fooling around with the classmate's boyfriend? Is that why Francine seems trapped in thinking about the good old days, when she was younger and some stranger offered to help her become a model, or making plans for a future when she and Rose can take a vacation together?

The mother has saved up money that people gifted to Rose for various special occasions during her childhood, and it's just a given, apparently, that it would be enough for the two of them to travel to Italy and for Rose to do whatever else she wants with it. The teen can't ask why it's so much, lest her mother evade the question or call her daughter ungrateful for others' generosity—not to mention Francine's own for putting the funds aside for her.

It's not just Joe whose presence and increasing absence, as his "business" takes him away more frequently, linger over Rose. It's Connie, who gets married a few years later, has a daughter of her own, and goes out partying to avoid what her life has become. It's also Francine, who speaks supportively to Rose but only seems genuinely supportive when the course of her younger daughter's life leads her right back to her mother. Esposito's screenplay may focus exclusively on this story from Rose's point of view, but it understands that these three woman exist in a constant state of secrecy and the unspoken, as well as the utter loneliness that comes with living a life in that way.

The film, then, is a study of that and the pressures of devoting oneself to a family as inherently broken as this one, simply because that same family insists that's the way it should be. Rose has inklings of dreams, to go to beauty school and to audition as the guest host on daytime talk show, but everything and everyone keeps pushing her toward the family, such as dating Bobby (David Iacono), whose family moved next door at her father's insistence, or running a bakery Joe ostensibly buys for his daughters, only to quickly realize it's really for Allie (Nicholas Cirillo), the cousin whose father died. That young man, as well as his mother (played by Annabela Sciorra), has his own suspicions, and he's keeping them at bay with drugs.

Almost inevitably, the usual stuff of a mob story comes into play here. This leads to a scene of some violence that leaves a few too many questions dangling, but that's slightly preferable to the alternative of the film changing modes at the last minute, at least. Fresh Kills remains resolute in maintaining its perspective and offers a refreshing take on a well-worn narrative.

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