Staten Island

Give filmmaker and native son of Prince’s Bay James DeMonaco some credit; he puts all his heart into this absurd rob-the-mob yarn. Vincent D’Onofrio chews all available scenery as a mama-loving small-time crime boss (and amateur tree-sitter), Ethan Hawke needs cash for a brain-boosting fertility procedure on his wife, and Seymour Cassel is his friend, the kindly deaf-mute salumeria butcher. That the plot suddenly shuffles the chronology—part of a post-Tarantino eye for flamboyant detail that’s played for comedy and pathos—makes it feel like a new, worse movie starts halfway through. 'Staten Island' is not without surprises—nor is it any good.