The Yards
United States
2000
115 Min
Color
2.35:1
Spanish, English
Synopsis
In the rail yards of Queens, contractors repair and rebuild the city’s subway cars. These contracts are lucrative, so graft and corruption are rife. When Leo Handler gets out of prison, he finds his aunt married to Frank Olchin, one of the big contractors; he’s battling with a minority-owned firm for contracts. Willie Gutierrez, Leo’s best friend, is Frank’s bag man and heads a crew of midnight saboteurs who ruin the work of the Puerto Rican-owned firm. Leo needs a job, so Willie pays him to be his back-up. Then things go badly wrong one night, a cop IDs Leo, and everyone now wants him out of the picture. Besides his ailing mom and his cousin Erica, to whom can Leo turn? —IMDb
Director
James Gray
Bio: Writer/director James Gray made his first film Little Odessa (1994) at the age of twenty-four. The film, which starred Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Vanessa Redgrave and ‘Maximillian Schell’, received critical acclaim and was the winner of the Venice Film Festival’s prestigious Silver Lion Award in 1994.
Miramax Films released James Gray’s second feature, The Yards (2000) starring Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Faye Dunaway, Ellen Burstyn, Charlize Theron and James Caan in fall of 2000. The film was selected for official competition at the 2000 Cannes International Film Festival. Prior to ‘The Yards’ and ‘Little Odessa’, Gray attended film school at the University of Southern California. It was there that his student film Cowboys and Angels was first seen by producer Paul Webster, who encouraged Gray to write his first feature script.
As a child growing up in Queens, New York, Gray aspired to be a painter. However, when introduced in his early teenage years to the works… read more
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Jake Cole
15Apr13
I've moved in reverse order with Gray's filmography and unless Little Odessa is some kind of aberrant mess, it would seem as if he emerged fully formed as the greatest American modernist since Cimino. The Yards is as operatic a view of American corruption as The Godfather, yet it has a raw humanity in the jaundiced frame that never lets people become mere symbols. Astonishing.
felipelahm and HKFanatic like this
Neil Bahadur
7Apr13
class issues and existentialism raised to operatic heights, with an ending that reeks of Rossellini
Robert Regan and Jack Lehtonen like this
Classroom Battles
21Aug12
James Gray achieves a rare thing with "The Yards", in combining classical drama respecting most of the codes and stylistic implications of the crime & mafia genre, and bringing a true new breath by including ambiguous characters and an interesting and unexpected setting (the train industry). Theron is great, and Wahlberg could even convince you that he's not such a bad actor. Always good to see James Caan in form.
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Articles
Our roundup of essays and articles on this film.
Intimate Impressions: A Look at the First Book on James Gray
By Adam Cook on October 30, 2012
Jordan Mintzer’s collection of interviews is an indispensable source of insight into one of today’s best American filmmakers.
Harris Savides 1957 - 2012
By Notebook on October 11, 2012
One of the great cinematographers has left us. Savides worked with Van Sant, James Gray, Fincher, Noah Baumbach, Sophia Coppola, and more.
Daily Briefing. Jordan Mintzer's "James Gray"
By David Hudson on March 26, 2012
Gray is at BAMcinématek tonight. And Offscreen focuses on Fellini and Powell and Pressburger.
Daily Briefing. 2011 Lists from the Telegraph, Slate and More
By David Hudson on December 15, 2011
Also: A Cinefamily telethon, James Gray in New York and more.
Forms of Fate: "Two Lovers"
By Ryland Walker Knight on August 18, 2009
A version of this essay was published in German, in the film magazine Cargo, in June, as a DVD review. The Auteurs Notebook now presents the
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untitled
By Benoît on September 24, 2010
Notons une fois encore l’immense talent de James Gray, dès son deuxième film, à l’écriture et à la mise en scène. Cette dernière possède une photographie extrêmement soignée et une réalisation implacable… read review
Untitled
By jaredmobarak on June 8, 2009
After watching the latest entry from director James Gray, We Own the Night, my interest in seeing his previous work waned immensely. Not that I hated the film, it just wasn’t quite to the quality that… read review
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