How
are Tommy and Rosemarie Uva like Truman Capote, Yves Saint Laurent, Coco
Chanel, Jean Harlow, and Steve Prefontaine? They were all the subjects of rival
film treatments produced at roughly the same time. Obviously, when faced with
the prospects of a competitive production, you either want to be the first or
the best. Unfortunately, Nick Sandow settles for second best on both scores
with The Wannabe, which screens
during the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.
In
Raymond De Felitta’s superior Rob the Mob,
Tommy Uva is a low life operator, who hates the Mob. Sandow changes his name to
Greco and gives him a hero-complex fixated on John Gotti, “the Dapper Don.” For
obvious reasons, the Mafia has no need of a loser like Greco. Rose from Ozone
Park still loves him anyway, despite his whininess. To ingratiate himself with
the Mob, Greco hatches a hair-brained scheme to fix the Gotti trial.
Unfortunately, it only leads to a humiliating reality check from a neighborhood
captain. Smarting from the dressing down, Greco and his wife finally start the
holding up Mafia social clubs—the crime wave De Felitta shrewdly focused on
throughout his punchier second act.
As
Thomas and Rose “Greco,” Vincent Piazza and Patricia Arquette are cringingly
annoying. Frankly, the Mob just can’t whack them soon enough. Yes, with a title
like Wannabe, you have to expect a
sad, pathetic protagonist, but that does not make it any more pleasant to spend
time with these characters. Frankly, the Uvas were not especially grabby in Rob the Mob either, but De Felitta had
some wonderfully colorful supporting help from Andy Garcia as composite don of
dons “Big Al” Fiorello, Ray Romano as nervy crime reporter Jerry Cardozo, and
Burt Young as aging Mafia lieutenant Joey D. Unfortunately, Wannabe does not have analogs for any of
these characters, preferring to focus almost exclusively on the Grecos’
codependent relationship.
Still,
Wannabe captures the vibe of pre-Giuliani
New York quite well. It also inadvertently establishes the gutsiness of Guradian
Angel founder and media gadfly Curtis Sliwa’s radio crusade against Gotti.
Genre fans will also appreciate Michael “Spider” Imperioli’s brief but finely
turned work as Greco’s florist brother, Alphonse. Nevertheless, when the slow
starting film finally gets going, we have still already seen it all before.
