Dominick and Eugene Reviews

Hulce, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance as Mozart in AMADEUS, and Liotta, who made his stunning film debut as the disturbing ex-con in SOMETHING WILD, are teamed in this often-touching, unashamedly sentimental story of brotherly love. The two are 26-year-old twins who live together in a working-class neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Liotta is a medical student whom the good-natured but mildly retarded Hulce supports by working on a garbage truck. Because their parents are dead, the brothers share a special relationship, Hulce acting as provider and Liotta as protector. The equilibrium is threatened when Liotta is given the opportunity to do his residency in a prestigious Stanford program, which would require a two-year separation from his brother. On paper DOMINICK AND EUGENE has all the earmarks of too-plaintive melodrama, and in its weakest and most obvious moments it is little more than that. Director Young, who began his career as a documentary maker and whose feature films (NOTHING BUT A MAN, THE BALLAD OF GREGORIO CORTEZ) have been concerned with the triumph of human dignity, occasionally allows his film to become manipulative, although this is less a deliberate effect than it is the result of sentimental overkill. Most of the time Young manages to deal subtly with the emotions, and in these moments the film is affecting and sincere.