Things Change

Written by David Mamet and Shel Silverstein

Directed by David Mamet

At the USA Harvard Square

DAVID Mamet must be an extremely busy man. Long a playwright (American Buffalo) and screenwriter (The Untouchables), last year he also became a director, filming his own screenplay for House of Games. Considering these activities and his myriad other projects (including some here at the American Repertory Theater), it's a wonder that he ever found time to write and direct Things Change. From the looks of things, he must have done it all on his lunch hour.

The film seems to have much of what one might expect from a David Mamet movie: a Chicago setting, smooth gangsters and solid performances by some of Mamet's usual players (in this case, Joe Mantegna and Robert Prosky). What it lacks is Mamet's usual taut, tricky plotting, unsentimental direction and compelling characters.

Mamet is also famed for his dialogue, a distillation of the brazen, fast-talking, colorful speech of men (rarely women) motivated by avarice. His collaborator on the screenplay, Shel Silverstein, is known for his wonderfully subversive children's verse, as well as some scabrous poems for adults. One would think that between them they could come up with a wittier, juicier script than this one.

Things Change is actually two movies, one framed within the other. The outer plot is the story of Gino (Don Ameche), an old shoe-shine man who agrees to take the fall--and endure a three-to five-year prison sentence--in place of a mobster accused of murder. In return, he is to be paid enough money upon his release to realize his lifelong dream of owning a boat. Inept mob gofer Jerry (Mantegna) must babysit Gino until the court date. The plot turns on whether Jerry can keep Gino from changing his mind and escaping from his Chicago apartment before the trial.

The second plot begins when Jerry, feeling sorry for his charge, decides to allow Gino a last fling, taking him to Lake Tahoe, in secret defiance of his orders. Once there, Jerry manages to convince everyone that Gino is a mafia don--so important that you should feel ashamed if you have to ask who he is--and suddenly, Gino and Jerry find themselves VIP guests with a spacious hotel suite and an unlimited credit line at a Tahoe casino. This inner plot hinges on the question of how long Gino can keep up the deception, a feat made all the more difficult when Gino meets a real don (Prosky).

MAMET relishes these games of greed and deception, and he displays the casinos and the mobsters in all their garish glory. He presents a colorful parade of mob hierarchy, from obsequious, weasel-like underlings to laconic, imperious chieftains.

But don't hold your breath wondering if Gino can assimilate himself into this world. Sure, at first he is so unaccustomed to life in the lap of luxury that the uses the toilet in his suite and then puts the paper strip back on. But like Peter Sellers' Chance the Gardener in Being There, Gino coasts like a charmed figure, convincing everyone through his affable personality and his homespun platitudes that he is the genuine article.

Ameche walks through the film with sad, bloodhound eyes and a bad hair piece meant to make him look 20 years younger--that is, 60, instead of 80. But he can do no wrong here--and neither can Mantegna or Prosky, who by now can surely play whatever roles Mamet writes for them in their sleep--and here they seem to do so.

What little suspense remains in the two plots is bumped off by two separate and rather clumsy deus ex machina climaxes. And Gino and Jerry learn some nice lessons about friendship, loyalty and honor.

Like Gino, the movie could easily float on its charm, old-fashioned values and easy humor. But as a comedy, it lacks the Mamet bite. One would hardly have expected him to make a film that most grandmothers would love. But then, Things Change.