PALOOKAVILLE

It's the loser place Marlon Brando said he bought a one-way ticket for in “On the Waterfront,” and it's Alan Taylor's feature debut, a wry and surprisingly gentle comedy about three down-on-their luck dogfaces in New Jersey pooling their wits (such as they are) and resources and trying to pull off the perfect robbery and set themselves right for life. Sid, Russ and Jerry arent' bad, their luck just runs that way, and after a jewelry-store job that yields dough of the altogether wrong variety (they tunnel into a bakery by mistake), the trio takes a cue from an old gangster B-movie in planning the heist of their careers. A good-natured antidote to the bloody, splenetic crime rampages of Tarantino and his numerous imitators, PALOOKAVILLE will have you rooting for these well-meaning bums who just can't get a break – except from movie juries, who helped PALOOKAVILLE steal the top prize at the latest Venice Film Festival. – Charles Cassady