''Faithful'' is a 1996 American

comedy Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term o ...

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in C ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super- ...

directed by

Paul Mazursky Irwin Lawrence "Paul" Mazursky (April 25, 1930 – June 30, 2014) was an American film director, screenwriter, and actor. Known for his dramatic comedies that often dealt with modern social issues, he was nominated for five Academy Awards: three ...

and starring

Cher Cher (; born Cherilyn Sarkisian; May 20, 1946) is an American singer, actress and television personality. Often referred to by the media as the Honorific nicknames in popular music, "Goddess of Pop", she has been described as embodying female ...

Chazz Palminteri Calogero Lorenzo "Chazz" Palminteri (born May 15, 1952)
Chazzpalminteri.net. Retrieved on November 19, 2013. is an American ...

and

Ryan O'Neal Ryan O'Neal (born April 20, 1941) is an American actor and former boxer. He trained as an amateur boxer before beginning his career in acting in 1960. In 1964, he landed the role of Rodney Harrington on the ABC nighttime soap opera '' Peyton Place ...

. Palminteri wrote the screenplay, which is an adaptation of his stage play of the same name. ''Faithful'' tells the story of a woman, her husband and a hit man. The film was entered into the

46th Berlin International Film Festival The 46th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 15 to 26 February 1996. The Golden Bear was awarded to British-American film ''Sense and Sensibility'' directed by Ang Lee. The retrospective dedicated to American film director, p ...

. This is Mazursky's final theatrical film as director.

Plot

On her twentieth wedding anniversary, Maggie receives a diamond necklace and a price on her head; both from her husband, Jack. While waiting for the signal, all the way from Connecticut, to do the murder, the hitman Tony starts bonding with Maggie instead. Later, Jack shows up himself, complicating the entire situation.

Cast

as Margaret Connor *

Chazz Palminteri Calogero Lorenzo "Chazz" Palminteri (born May 15, 1952)
Chazzpalminteri.net. Retrieved on November 19, 2013. is an American ...

as Tony *

as Jack Connor *

as Dr. Susskind * Amber Smith as Debbie * Elisa Leonetti as Maria * Mark Nassar as Maria's Boyfriend *

Stephen Spinella Stephen Spinella (born October 11, 1956) is an American stage, television, and film actor. Early life Spinella was born in Naples, Italy, to a father who was an American naval airplane mechanic. He grew up in Glendale, Arizona, and graduated fr ...

as Young Man at Rolls * Jeffrey Wright as Young Man at Rolls * David Marino as Little Tony * Steven Randazzo as Tony's Father * Olinda Turturro as Tony's Mother * Max Norat as Jewellery Store Salesman

Reception

The film was received poorly at the box office, grossing just $2,104,439. It was a huge drop compared to Cher's previous starring role, ''

Mermaids In folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including Europe, Asia, and Africa. Mermaids are sometimes asso ...

'', which grossed $35,419,397 in 1990. The film's opening weekend of just $967,956 would end as 46% of the film's total gross. This film was Cher's least successful film of the decade in a starring role. The film was also widely panned by film critics, earning a 6% "rotten" rating on the website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

from 16 reviews. Multiple critics remarked that the story had obviously been written for theatre, and had not converted well to the motion picture medium. Writing in ''

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular ...

'',

Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for '' Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...

described it as "an awkward hybrid of '' Deathtrap'', ''

Scenes from a Marriage ''Scenes from a Marriage'' ( sv, Scener ur ett äktenskap) is a 1973 Swedish television miniseries written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Over the course of six hour-long episodes, it explores the disintegration of the marriage between Mariann ...

'', and a

David Mamet David Alan Mamet (; born November 30, 1947) is an American playwright, filmmaker, and author. He won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for his plays ''Glengarry Glen Ross'' (1984) and '' Speed-the-Plow'' (1988). He first gained cri ...

barstool rant." ''

The Austin Chronicle ''The Austin Chronicle'' is an alternative weekly newspaper published every Thursday in Austin, Texas, United States. The paper is distributed through free news-stands, often at local eateries or coffee houses frequented by its targeted demogr ...

'' gave it one and a half stars, commenting that "The dialogue packs a lot of witty one-liners, yet their power is insufficient to carry this dud. ... The comedy never works up enough froth to overcome the movie's implausibility. Palminteri is carving himself a familiar niche as a personifier of tough guys with soft spots, but this chatty hit man is not of this world."

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

similarly praised the dialogue as clever but felt it was outweighed by the predictable plot and logic holes such as the "kill" signal being two telephone rings (apparently leaving no room for the possibilities of someone else calling the house or of Jack calling the hit off). He gave ''Faithful'' two and a half stars, summarizing it as "the kind of movie that's diverting while you're watching it, mostly because of the actors' appeal, but it evaporates the moment it's over, because it’s not really about anything. Nothing is at stake, the relationships are not three-dimensional enough for us to care about them, and it's likely that nobody will get killed."

References

External links

* * {{Paul Mazursky 1996 films 1990s black comedy films American black comedy films Films directed by Paul Mazursky American crime comedy films 1990s English-language films Films about psychiatry Miramax films Films about adultery in the United States Films produced by Robert De Niro Savoy Pictures films Midlife crisis films New Line Cinema films 1990s crime comedy films 1990s American films