A Stranger Among Us

United States

1992

110 Min

Color

1.85:1

English, Yiddish, Hebrew

Currently 2.1/5 Stars.
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PROD Steve Golin, Howard Rosenman, Sigurjon Sighvatsson

CAST Melanie Griffith, John Pankow, Tracy Pollan, Lee Richardson, Mia Sara, Jamey Sheridan, Eric Thal, James Gandolfini, David Margulies, Burtt Harris, Chris Latta, Jake Weber, Rena Sofer

Gung-ho workaholic lonely WASP Brooklyn detective Emily Eden and her partner Nick while outside a movie theater, pad down two perps and Nick gets stuck with a blade. Emily kills the fleeing perp who wielded the knife and arrests the other. Internal Affairs investigates for excessive force and clears her for duty. Her precinct boss assigns the antsy lady, looking for action after her forced vacation, to the Hasidic community in Brooklyn’s Park Slope to investigate the case of a young Hasidic diamond dealer, Yaakov Klausman, missing for two days. Emily finds him dead in the ceiling of the office where he works in Manhattan. Convinced it’s an inside job, Emily talks her precinct captain and the Hasidic Rebbe to let her go undercover in the community to catch the thief who stole $750,000 worth in diamonds. This requires her to get a more modest wardrobe and change her hair color to a tamer one. Emily stays with the Rebbe’s sweet adopted daughter Leah, and her brilliant Talmudic scholar brother Ariel takes her around the community. Detective Levine, a cynical worldly Jew, is assigned as her outside back-up partner. While she’s planted inside the vic’s jewelry story, two mobsters shake down the place for protection money. Setting a police trap, they apprehend the thugs. When they flee, they are gunned down in the street. But before dying insist they didn’t kill the kid. —Ozu’s World of Movie Reviews

Director

Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet (born June 25, 1924) is an American film director, with over 50 films to his name, including 12 Angry Men (1957), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and The Verdict (1982), all of which, except for Serpico (1973), earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director.

According to The Encyclopedia of Hollywood, Lumet is one of the most prolific directors of the modern era making more than one movie per year on average since his directorial debut in 1957. He is especially noted for his ability to draw major actors to his projects. “Because of his visual economy, strong direction of actors, vigorous storytelling and use of the camera to accent themes,” states Turner Classic Movies. “Lumet produced a body of work that could only be defined as extraordinary.”

One of his steady themes during his career has been the “fragility of justice and the police and their corruption,” according to Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film. He can deliver… read more

Sidney Lumet (born June 25, 1924) is an American film director, with over 50 films to his name, including 12 Angry Men (1957), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and The Verdict (1982), all of which, except for Serpico (1973), earned him Academy Award nominations for Best Director.

According to The Encyclopedia of Hollywood, Lumet is one of the most prolific directors of the modern era making more than one movie per year on average since his directorial debut in 1957. He is especially noted for his ability to draw major actors to his projects. “Because of his visual economy, strong direction of actors, vigorous storytelling and use of the camera to accent themes,” states Turner Classic Movies. “Lumet produced a body of work that could only be defined as extraordinary.”

One of his steady themes during his career has been the “fragility of justice and the police and their corruption,” according to Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film. He can deliver “powerhouse performances from lead actors,” and fine work from character actors and is today one of the foremost figures of New York moviemaking. His sensitivity to actors and to the rhythms of the city have made him “America’s longest-lived descendant of the 1950s Neorealist tradition and its urgent commitment to ethical responsibility.”

Lumet began as an off-Broadway director, then became a highly efficient TV director. His first movie was typical of his best work: a well-acted, tightly written, deeply considered “problem picture,” 12 Angry Men (1957). Since then, Lumet has divided his energies among other idealistic problem pictures along with literate adaptations of plays and novels, big stylish pictures, and New York-based black comedies. As a result of directing 12 Angry Men, he is also responsible for leading the first wave of directors who made a successful transition from TV to movies. For being one of the most reliable and dependable directors of the last half-century, in 2005 he received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement for his “brilliant services to screenwriters, performers, and the art of the motion picture.”—Wikipedia

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