Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

This didn't sound too appealing to me and there are no big names in the cast, but I have to say it is a gripping and enjoyable story. The acting is superb and the relationships between the characters well thought out.It's not emotionally draining so to that extent perhaps it lacks a bit of depth, but even so you get to sympathize with the plight of people who don't really fit into the rapidly changing world. The brutality comes with morality albeit not in a conventional form, and there is a sense that everything will turn out OK if you live by that code.A regular college kid whose job is not waiting tables or flipping burgers, but following in the family tradition of gangland crime, is a fascinating take on a familiar theme, and it works really well.Not too demanding but very enjoyable with some fantastic performances.

The Narrows is a great example of how NOT to adapt a novel to the screen. That's because there are a lot of nice elements to this film, but just too blessed many of them. At only 106 minutes long, this movie has at least 10 separate story lines running through it and tries to give each of them roughly equal attention. And since at least 5 of those story lines don't really play a role in the central plot, that means The Narrows spends at least half its screen time on digressions that ultimately go nowhere. Which means the essential elements of this tale go starved for time and attention.Mike Manadoro (Kevin Zegers) is a Brooklyn kid with a love of photography. He's won a partial scholarship to college and the chance to study with a great photography professor (Roger Rees). But Mike's job at the mobbed-up car service run by Big Lou (Tony Cucci) doesn't pay enough to cover the rest of the cost of school. So when Lou's brother Tony (Titus Welliver), the neighborhood wiseguy, offers Mike a pick up and delivery job that pays $2,000 a week, Mike takes it.That greatly displeases Mike's father Vinny (Vincent D'Onofrio), a small time bookie who's on disability from his job in sanitation. Vinny's spent most of his life standing on the edges of Tony and Lou's criminal underworld, always holding himself apart. He's an unyielding man whose entire world and self is the neighborhood he's lived in his whole life. Vinny is also disappointed in his son when he compares him to Mike's childhood friend Nicky Shades (Eddie Cahill). Nicky was the hero of the neighborhood growing up until he went away to fight in Afghanistan. Now he's back and fallen so far he needs Mike to vouch for him just to get a job with Lou.At college, Mike meets and falls in love with Kathy (Sophia Bush), a rich girl from Manhattan who's both attracted and scared by Mike's working class character and dangerous lifestyle. While he's pursuing and bedding Kathy, Mike isn't at all bothered by the fact that he already has a girlfriend from the neighborhood (Monica Keena) who desperately wants to marry him.As if all that wasn't enough, there's also a subplot involving one of Mike's co-workers sleeping with a slutty married woman, the destruction of Mike's hero worship of Nicky Shades, Tony having to deal with Albanians encroaching on his territory, Mike's struggles with college and, I believe, a partridge in a pear tree.That is a whole lot of stuff to cram into a 106 minute long film and despite some very admirable efforts, director Francois Velle can't pull it off. The movie just spends too much time on things that ultimately don't matter.Let met give you an example. At the beginning of the story, Mike's photography is held up as the thing that might get him out of his dead end Brooklyn world. Velle emphasizes that by constantly utilizing photographs and photographic imagery throughout the movie. At the end of the story, however, Mike's photography has become irrelevant. Kathy is the vehicle through which Mike will or won't escape Brooklyn. But when the crucial moment comes for Mike and Kathy, it doesn't mean everything it should because they haven't had enough meaningful time together on screen due to all the other things going on. All the time that was spent on photography, for example, ended up meaning nothing and that was time that could have gone into deepening and complicating Mike and Kathy's relationship so there would be more of an investment when their big moment comes.As I mentioned, The Narrows is adapted from a book and these filmmakers needed to be much more ruthless is leaving things from the book out of the film. There are the ingredients of something very nice here. Vincent D'Onofrio gives a sterling performance as Vinny, even though the character does get knocked around by the Almighty Plot Hammer a bit. Titus Welliver and Eddie Cahill are also very good, but they have relatively little screen time and can never build up any momentum. Kevin Zegers is a bit bland but perfectly agreeable and the breathy, beautiful Sophia Bush gives just enough grounding to the perfect fantasy that is Kathy. In fact, all of the cast do worthwhile work in their roles. There's simply too many of them doing too many things that don't contribute to the whole of the movie.This certainly isn't a bad film and it's largely enjoyable, but it ends in an anti-climatic emotional and thematic spiral that left me unsatisfied. Your mileage may vary, but no matter how much you may like it, I am pretty sure you'll come away thinking The Narrows could have been even better.

Most of the films of this genre are hackneyed remakes of classics with nothing new to add except a new face here and there. This film is obviously tailored to an intelligent novel and the acting is surprisingly tight. Donofrio is outstanding as the bitter old numbers runner who can't seem to get over the death of is saintly Italian wife; not too many clichés there, huh? But he pulls it off with the panache only he can bring to a role. Huzzah for you, Mr. Vincent, you did it again. But as the lead, Kevin Zegers steals the show. Where has this kid been? He is believable, beautiful and serious. I know that the established critics bombed this film, but that's never swayed me all that much. I watch a lot of films and this one, though far from a ten, is a solid seven.

Really good modern New York streetwise gangster movie. The Narrows has a wide range of good acting from the cast, but Titus Welliver as the local mob boss was so good he scared me. Vincent D'Onofrio was as good as he always is, as one of the local underlings & the father of the main character, Mike Manadoro played by Kevin Zegers. Kevin Zegers I had not seen before, but he held his own throughout the flick & I hope to see him again. The rest of the cast helped the movie for me come out as one of those huge surprises you come across when you search through a list of nameless movies to find a sleeper hit & "The Narrows" was just that. Also, Sophia Bush as Mike Manadoro's new upscale girlfriend, well she was just hot. If you have a chance to see this do, it will be well worth your time.surferboy