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LAKEBOAT Send This Review to a Friend
David Mamet's brand of brittle, candid, raunchy dialogue leaps from the screen in an unusual, quirky drama confined mostly to a Lake Michigan freighter one summer in the 1970s in a film that Joe Mantegna has produced and directed from a Mamet script, which in turn stems from an early Mamet play. Mamet wrote the tale from his own experiences working on such a freighter in a summer job.
Although there is not much action, there is plenty of pontificating by members of the crew as seen through the perspective of young college student Dale Katzman, played with open-eyed curiosity by Tony Mamet, the playwright's brother. A colorful cast builds the portrait of men trying to be more than they really are on this forlorn ship captained by portly Charles Durning as Skippy, who acts as if he's the skipper of the greatest vessel in the world.
Peter Falk sets the tone at the outset with his funny recounting of exploits to his buddies on a bus taking them to the ship. Others in the cast include George Wendt, Robert Forster, J. J. Johnston, Denis Leary and Jack Wallace, and the talk, for all the bravado, is very revealing and at times insightful. The men are losers, and there is no indication that they'll ever be anything else but losers. Life has passed them by, which makes the film sad. Yet the dialogue is often hilarious in the Mamet manner, replete with the sort of profanity you would expect from such a crew.
Dale has the advantage of knowing that for him this is just an experience as a replacement. He'll move on with his life. Although this is a slim work, it is an important piece in the sum total of Mamet's career, as well as an engrossing character study, and if you approach it on that basis, you may find "Lakeboat" involving, enjoyable and enlightening. Just don't demand lake-faring action. An Oregon Trail Films release.
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