Surprisingly incoherent and boring

One of my all time favorites.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The movie plot is very interesting. A father, son and grandfather conspire to commit a crime which goes wrong when one of them gets caught and they all struggle to keep quiet.The major problem is that the three actors have nothing in common with each other, or not enough to convince the viewer that they are a family. Yes, they all have eyes, ears, a nose, although different in all three, and yes, dark hair, the only commonality, but they would have been convincing had they each said they were a stepchild or adopted child.Family setups are a common problem in movies, but I won't list any others here so as not to ruin anyone's viewing.

Besides the three main characters reading like the beginning of a bad joke: "A Jew, A Sicilian and a Scot walk into a bar..", this is not a terrible movie.Connery, Hoffman and Broderick all were mis-cast. Connery just does not look like a con man: He looks like the president. Hmmm. Maybe a bad analogy.Why not get three people who look somewhat similar, maybe like Nick Nolte, Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater?So, as I said, this movie is not god-awful. It is rather good, but there are one or two major complaints I have:Why is Broderick's character (Adam) angry at his father (Hoffman as Vito) after Vito turns himself in to the police.., since Adam was the one who got him involved in the first place?!Why does Vito apologize to Adam towards the end, when it should have been the other way around?There is an inconsistency in the plot, too: The judge would have thrown the book at Adam, not his grandfather (Connery as Jessie), once they realized that he was recently a graduate student of molecular biology, and obviously the brains and impetus of the caper. Jessie was infuriatingly arrogant and persuasive, and I was not sorry to see him go to the slammer. Vito should have gone head-to-head against Jessie, in an attempt to save his son from a life of crime and/or punishment. Now THAT would have been worth watching.I'm not even going to ask how the Jew, the Sicilian and the Scot became Irish. McMullen? Anyone?

As far as directorial work, this movie is a mixed bag; the pacing borders on terrible and there are some elements that are either wasted, or are the movie version of a non-sequitor. On the other hand, it has a few really good shots in it, too, and comes across as having some emotional honesty to every character that gives it value. It has funny moments but it's not a comedy, but more a drama. I'm writing this review mostly because the different moralities at play give people very subjective interpretations as to what this entire story is actually about. The three stars each have something to say that comes out garbled in the film's message. Connery is the grandfather, Hoffman the father, Broderick the son. The real action is within the dynamics between Broderick and Hoffman, the son and his father who cannot see the other's point of view clearly; Hoffman has renounced crime to do well-paying grunt work for the rest of his life to care for his family, pressuring Broderick into a conventionally successful career that the kid doesn't want. But the thing is, Hoffman dislikes his life, and Broderick, as Connery points out, can smell the dishonesty; the boy resents the pressure placed on him to make good on his father's self-sacrificing investment. Hoffman's character, in bourgeoisie fashion, places way too much emphasis on status at the expense of intimacy, and there is a price. This is one of those situations that bedevils families in the real world all the time, just exaggerated. If you don't have a taste for what the world considers the right way, then do you suck it up and pay it forward to the next generation? Do you deny yourself to create a more conventional environment for your kid? Even if it basically costs you a sense of identity that the kid might not respect you for losing? Or do you go your own way, accept the risks, and take your lumps? Sometimes, self-sacrifice is the best thing to do in the bigger calculation; sometimes, it's just stupid, a chip turning into a huge burden maintained by delusional self-righteousness. There's an interesting, and thoughtful, code of ethics going on here. Connery's criminal morals are interesting: the risk, for him, makes crime honest, like any other business venture. As an economist and one who understands enough about the ethics behind property rights to know how fuzzy all this is, I can understand. It's not exactly inaccurate, and I share Connery's disdain for the idea that the law defines morality. So the movie raises some interesting questions, and that I like. Call it a C+, verging on B-.

When I see this film reviewed, over and over, as a comedy, I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. This is one of the most brutally cynical, agonizingly tragic films I've ever seen - the story of a family caught up in the romance of crime, trying to help at least the youngest generation escape its inevitable fate.Perhaps it helps to know Sidney Lumet's other work, especially his previous bitterly brilliant collaborations with Sean Connery: The Hill, and The Offense. Family Business is a similarly scathing attack on preconceptions. Lumet takes what looks like a tame little 'heist comedy' scenario and shows just how poisonously evil it really is. He gives us the charming scoundrel (Connery), and shows how destructive his devil-may-care attitude can be.One might as well criticize Othello or Macbeth for having no laughs. This film is, in fact, Shakespearian in its tragic dimensions. Connery starts out with the classic Tragic Flaw, and must pay for it in the end. (There is a heroic dimension in his ultimate realization, at least.)I can easily understand that many people won't enjoy this film. It's a nasty, venomous, painful piece of work. But it's also quite brilliant. If you want easy answers, by all means, rent Ocean's Eleven. But if you're up for a challenge, don't overlook Family Business.