Taglines: Gloria. Big mouth. Big attitude. But who knew she had a big heart.
Gloria (Sharon Stone), has just gotten out of prison, where she has served three years to save her boyfriend, Kevin (Jeremy Northam). During her stay in prison, she thinks about how Kevin never once visited her. She goes to Kevin and tells him that the relationship is over and that all she wants is the money he promised her for taking the rap for him. He refuses to give it to her.
Meanwhile, the gang’s accountant has tried to give himself some protection by creating a computer disk which has the names of all those involved in the outfit’s criminal activities. The plan backfires, and, in trying to get the disk, one of Kevin’s trigger-happy henchmen kills the accountant, as well as his wife, mother-in-law and daughter. Only his seven-year-old son Nicky (Jean-Luke Figueroa) escapes, but is quickly caught and brought to Kevin’s apartment. It is there that Gloria and Nicky’s paths cross. Gloria must decide whether or not to risk her life in order to save the boy.
Gloria is a remake of the 1980 film of the same name written and directed by John Cassavetes. It was directed by Sidney Lumet and starred Sharon Stone as Gloria. It is also notable as George C. Scott’s final theatrically released film. The supporting cast also includes Jeremy Northam, Cathy Moriarty-Gentile, Bonnie Bedelia, and Barry McEvoy.
Film Review for Gloria
Sharon Stone may have left her heart in San Francisco, but the rest of her is strictly from Noo Yawk in a richly comic performance as the heroine of ”Gloria.” To hear Ms. Stone turning ”off” into ”awf,” ”all right” into ”awright,” ”the” into ”duh” and ”go ahead” into ”g’head” is a delight all by itself. But her Gloria also talks tough, spews obscenities, wields handguns with unflinching authority, drives like a demon, makes grown males strip, tells a little boy precisely why, anatomically, he is not a man and gives him advice about the kind of fun she expects him to have when — and if — he grows up, which involves booze, gambling, tuxedos and skinny but otherwise well-endowed blondes.
”I like sleeping with you,” the little boy tells Gloria after they have spent a night in a motel. And Gloria says, ”You know, you’re not the first guy to tell me that.” A self-described broad, Gloria is a brassy, gutsy, foul-mouthed ex-con who finds she has an unexpected heart of mush when her error-prone path through life crosses that of little Nicky Nunez (Jean-Luke Figueroa), whose father made the mistake of taking work home.
Because Nicky’s father is an accountant for a gangster named Kevin (Jeremy Northam), and because the work in question consists of an incriminating computer disk containing the names of police officers, judges and Congressmen on the mob payroll, Kevin is understandably eager to recover it. So he dispatches one of his henchman to the Washington Heights apartment where the Nunez family lives. And because Nicky’s father is reluctant to reveal the whereabouts of the disk at once, the henchman successively shoots and kills Mrs. Nunez, her mother, Mr. Nunez and his daughter.
The disk, at this time, is on its way down a fire escape in the custody of Nicky, who is seized by the gangsters in time to be present in Kevin’s headquarters when Gloria returns from a three-year absence. Since he was once Gloria’s lover, these premises are her former apartment, and since she is just out of a Florida prison on parole after taking a rap for Kevin, she is understandably testy.
When Gloria realizes that 6-year-old Nicky has been marked for murder, she takes matters into her own hands, and off they go on a run through New York City. Kevin meanwhile, is sweating out a deadline imposed by his boss, the smooth but menacing Ruby (George C. Scott), another of Gloria’s ex-lovers; and Gloria, who shouldn’t be in New York in the first place, is sweating out the deadline for an imminent date with her parole officer in Florida.
As written by Steve Antin and directed by Sidney Lumet, with his customary fine eye for the urban landscape of New York City, this ”Gloria” is a smoother, funnier, more suspenseful and more endearing version of the 1980 John Cassavetes film of the same title. Young Mr. Figueroa makes a fine foil for the intermittently maternal Gloria. And Ms. Stone, who in one guise or another has always been a treat, turns in a performance that definitely merits the key to Noo Yawk.
Gloria (1999)
Directed by: Sidney Lumet
Starring: Sharon Stone, Jeremy Northam, Cathy Moriarty, Jean-Luke Figueroa, Mike Starr, George C. Scott, Barry McEvoy, Sarita Choudhury, Miriam Colon
Screenplay by: Steve Antin
Production Design by: Mel Bourne
Cinematography by: David Watkin
Film Editing by: Tom Swartwout
Costume Design by: Dona Granata
Set Decoration by: Laura Lambert
Art Direction by: Carlos Menéndez
Music by: Howard Shore
MPAA Rating: R for violence and language.
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures
Release Date: January 22, 1999
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