Something to watch tonight: State of Grace

I was­n’t plan­ning on post­ing any­thing to mark the 25^th anniversary of 9/11¹ but the oth­er night I watched the hand­some new 4K disc of Phil Joanou’s 1990 neo-noir State of Grace which fea­tures the twin towers in almost every exter­i­or shot.

It feels like it was some kind of Manhattan bylaw that film­makers could­n’t go more than five minutes before includ­ing anoth­er angle of the World Trade Center. It’s still haunt­ing and prob­ably will be for the rest of my days.

Joanou had come to prom­in­ence dir­ect­ing the1988 U2 doc­u­ment­ary Rattle & Hum (dis­missed by many because it was about U2 but it’s a good film) and State of
Grace was his entry into the big time world of fea­ture films. Set among the Irish crim­in­al gangs of Hell’s Kitchen, it starred three hot young act­ors: Sean Penn as the under­cov­er cop asked to rat out his best friends; Gary Oldman as the hot head, Jackie, and Robin Wright as Kathy, Jackie’s sis­ter who is try­ing to escape the crim­in­al life that her fam­ily leads.

Maturity comes in the form of Ed Harris as Jackie and Kathy’s older broth­er, Frankie. He recog­nises that the Westies (as the film was ori­gin­ally going to be called) are small pota­toes in the New York organ­ised crime scene and tries to forge an alli­ance with one of the Italian fam­il­ies, a choice that will lead to tragedy².

It’s inter­est­ing to note that baby Sean Penn looks more like his broth­er Chris in this pic­ture than he does Sean, and Oldman is in the same ‘let­ting it all hang out’ mode that he showed us in Sid & Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears. Wright also climbs the walls in a couple of scenes mainly because there’s not enough on the page for her to latch on to. And they all get handed a les­son when vet­er­an Burgess Meredith turns up for one scene as a frightened old man with a debt to the gang and import­ant plot inform­a­tion to impart.

This was a touch­stone film for me when it came out – I’ve been car­ry­ing around the VHS copy I recor­ded off Sky for years – but I remem­ber it being much more atmo­spher­ic than this. It degen­er­ates into repet­it­ive sweary scream­ing matches too often for its own good.

Apparently, com­ing out the same week as Goodfellas did the pic­ture no favours at the box office (and a com­par­is­on between the two does it no favours at all) but the new 4K trans­fer looks beau­ti­ful in the wide exter­i­ors and a bit soft in the close-ups and Joanou’s music selec­tions are as choice today as they were then – Lyle Lovett!

Jordan Cronenweth’s cine­ma­to­graphy gets a really good show­case here: the rain soaked streets lit by fluor­es­cent street­lights and neon signs and the swirl­ing smoke from the ever-present cigar­ettes that Penn him­self remains addicted to³.

Incidentally, Frankie’s right hand man, Nicholson, is played vet­er­an char­ac­ter act­or R.D. Call. Call got his first pro gig on an epis­ode of the TV show Barnaby Jones that was dir­ec­ted by Sean Penn’s fath­er, Leo Penn, and he seems to have been some­thing of a good luck charm for Sean, appear­ing in about half a dozen pic­tures with him⁴.

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Where to watch State of Grace

Physical media: Imprint 4K UHD lim­ited edi­tion from ViaVision. The UHD format is region-free by design.

Aotearoa: Streaming on Prime Video

Australia: Streaming on Prime Video

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video or Tubi (free with ads)

Ireland: Not cur­rently avail­able online

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Streaming on Prime Video, Fubo, MGM+, Philo or Roku (free with ads)

UK: Streaming on Prime Video

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1. I’ve covered that a few times here. ↩︎
2. The story of the Irish mob in Hell’s Kitchen is being told once again in the new series The Westies, star­ring J.K. Simmons. Streaming on Neon in Aotearoa. ↩︎
3. He was asked to stop smoking three times at this year’s Golden Globes, appar­ently. ↩︎
4. And one that Penn dir­ec­ted – Into the Wild. ↩︎