The Wannabe Reviews

Slight but amusing, The Wannabe is a sort of +Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead for the gangster set: If most mob movies are about a criminal climbing the ladder from nobody to flunky to kingpin, then this one is about a guy who never gets past the first rung. It helps that Vincent Piazza, playing a Mafia-obsessed New Yorker who tries to fix the John Gotti trial in 1992, has the intensity and handsome-in-a-sleazy-way looks that make you think he should be the lead in a crime drama (in fact, he was a regular on Boardwalk Empire).There's some nice subverting of the expected clichés -- a scene of Piazza strutting down the street to a bouncy pop song only leads to a door being slammed in his face -- but the real heart of the story is his relationship with a recovering drug addict played by Patricia Arquette. Both of them are dreamers desperate for a better life than the one they've got, and aren't willing to listen to the family members telling them to accept reality. Rather than help each other, the pair begin feeding off the other's desperation, eventually resorting to holding up mob poker games for easy money after it becomes clear that they'll never be accepted by the organization. When it comes time for them to face the possibility of retribution and the sad emptiness of their lives, as in a scene where Arquette lies to a friend about being happy and pregnant and barely has the energy to sound convincing, the film becomes surprisingly moving.