Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
Directed by Joseph Cedar
Written by Joseph Cedar
Starring Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Hank Azaria, Steve Buscemi, Michael Sheen, Dan Stevens
Release Date April 14th, 2017
As a critic, it’s hard not to get tired of seeing the same kind of movie over and over again. Conventional three-act stories with stock heroes and predictable villains or simple romances with happy endings get tiresome after a while. It’s really nice to experience a movie with a different style, even if that movie isn’t entirely satisfying. The new movie Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer is, at the very least, a nice departure from the norm.
Norman Oppenheimer is rather strange and kind of pathetic. He is the type of man who insinuates himself into the business of others. When we meet Norman, he is accosting the assistant of a high-powered New York financier and attempting to finagle a meeting that he hopes might make him some money. Norman’s business isn’t much of a business, you see; he considers himself a consultant whose job is to connect one person to another person in hopes that each will give him something for making the connection between the two.
We get no sense of how successful Norman is as a ‘consultant’ but he has a nice suit, and when he meets an Israeli politician who he sees as a business opportunity, he’s able to drop a big bucks present on him, though not without wincing at the price. Norman hopes to get the politician, Micha Eshel (Lior Ashknazi) to attend a dinner being held by another New York big shot in hopes that making the connection will create opportunities for himself.
Three years after this scheme fails, we find that Norman and Micha have remained friends and for once Norman’s schmoozing has paid off. Micha is now the Israeli Prime Minister and when he spies Norman at a New York fundraiser, he welcomes him as if he were family — family he doesn’t speak to regularly and does not return phone calls to, but still family. Norman’s new connection, no matter how tenuous, remains lucrative to him as the financiers who would not meet with him before are suddenly eager to do business.
Find my full length review in the Geeks Community
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