‘Little Odessa’ (R)

"LITTLE ODESSA," writer/director James Gray's smart, brooding debut, is only superficially a gangster picture. A story about a hit man (Tim Roth), who's forced to make a killing in his old, Russian-Jewish neighborhood in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, the movie's almost entirely free of bloodshed. When violence does come, it's over almost instantly. Silence rushes back in, and the movie gets back to its primary business—painting its own atmosphere.

In the dead of winter, a calm, tight-lipped Roth approaches a human target and assassinates him point blank. When he reports his success on a pay phone, Roth is told there's another hit to be made, in Little Odessa. Roth doesn't want to return to his old stomping grounds, where his murderous ways have made him a pariah. But his Russian mafia boss is insistent.

Roth's attempts to be incognito as he stakes out his target are futile. Inevitably, he comes face to face with the people from his haunted past—his father (Maximilian Schell), who has forbidden his murderous son to set foot in his house again; his mother (Vanessa Redgrave), suffering horribly from a brain tumor; his younger brother (Edward Furlong), who idolizes Roth; and the girlfriend (Moira Kelly) he left behind.

Hearing his brother's back in town, Furlong tracks Roth down and gradually works the cold-hearted professional back into humanness. There is clearly great love and loyalty between them. And after spending time with Furlong and rekindling things with Kelly, Roth comes out of a spiritual deep-freeze.

But the question of Roth's redemption hangs unsurely in the air. He shows no intention of changing his profession. And the rift between him and his father appears unbridgeable. The movie seems to be quietly building towards something—and you know it's not good—but what?

Filmmaker Gray, only 25 when he made this, expertly delineates the restive characters in this Jewish emigre community, and the existential voids among them all. He's helped by assured, subtle performances all around. Roth is superb as the involuntary prodigal son, who retraces the past he left in such a hurry and finds things to care for. Furlong's "Shane"-like adulation towards his brother is marvelously affecting. And Schell is also memorable as the empathetic but hypocritical tyrant who attends to his ailing wife, visits a mistress (Natasha Andreichenko) on the side, and sanctimoniously condemns Roth for murder.

There are many other things to savor, including cinematographer Tim Richmond's darkened, wintry images, and Gray's apparently improvisary air. Much of the movie has a documentary feeling, as if the characters are free to do as much—or as little—as they want. When Furlong sits quietly at the bedside of his agonized mother (a convincingly Russian Redgrave), or Schell angrily confronts Roth in his apartment, these moments feel almost snatched from reality. "Odessa," which won the Venice Film Festival's Silver Lion award, pulls you into a house of fictional characters, but you leave believing you've spent time with real ones. -

LITTLE ODESSA (R) — Contains sexual situations, nudity, profanity and isolated violence.