The latest star-filled fiasco passing a contractually mandated week on a rental screen between its Sundance premiere and arrival on DVD, the third film from Queens auteur Dito Montiel (the fine “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints’’) is a laughable police melodrama.
Channing Tatum, a former model who had a supporting role in “Saints,’’ as well as the lead in Montiel’s merely OK “Fighting,’’ returns for “The Son of No One.’’
He plays Jon White, a flabby 30-year-old rookie cop with a silly-looking moustache who’s upset when he’s abruptly transferred from Staten Island to a precinct in his childhood neighborhood of Long Island City.
It’s early 2002, and memories of 9/11 are still fresh, but Jon is dogged by guilt.
As a youngster (played by Jake Cherry) in 1986, he killed a pair of drug dealers — one of whom sexually abused his retarded black pal (Brian Gilbert) — infesting the massive Queensbridge city housing project.
Jon was protected back then by his late police officer dad’s former partner (Al Pacino).
But shortly after our hero’s arrival back in LIC, a columnist for a local newspaper (incongruously played by French star Juliette Binoche) begins publishing letters agitating for an investigation into the old crime.
The source of the letters — the black pal, now played (not badly at all) by Tracy Morgan — is as wholly improbable as the precinct captain (Ray Liotta) encouraging Jon to permanently silence the offending writer to avoid a scandal.
Tatum’s Jon does a lot of looking anguished — as does Katie Holmes as his concerned wife (and the mother of their epileptic son) back on Staten Island.
The only one who seems to be enjoying himself in this movie is James Ransone as Jon’s borderline-psychotic partner.
Inevitably, Pacino’s character returns as an about-to-retire police commander so the star can deliver the latest hammy turn of this paycheck phase of his career. It’s worth noting this is Pacino’s third film for prolific schlock producer Avi Lerner, after the egregious “Righteous Kill’’ and “88 Minutes.”
Ineptly written and directed, the nihilistic “The Son of No One’’ flaunts an attitude best summed up by a cynical Pacino — “A man has to live with s–t.’’ Maybe so, Al, but audiences have the option of skipping this bomb.