The Son of No One

“A man has to learn to live with shit,” an over-the-top Al Pacino growls in Dito Montiel's study of misery and corruption in the ghettos of Queens. Pretentiously incoherent, The Son of No One is an oddball police melodrama featuring abrupt chronological shifts, shaky handheld cinematography, weirdly angled camerawork, impressionistic montages, mumbled and often overlapping dialogue, cruelly overemphatic close-ups, and footage of 9/11 to serve as a broader counterpart to its tale of gloom and doom. Channing Tatum stars as cop Johnny White, whose unhappy childhood in the projects is tied to a simmering contemporary scandal having to do with plans to gentrify the area, coupled with charges that the police—especially Johnny's captain, Marion Mathers (Ray Liotta), and retired chief investigator Charles Stanford (Pacino)—once covered up a couple of killings in the crime-ridden high-rise where the boy lived. Interwoven into the contemporary narrative are flashbacks to 1986, when the young Johnny (Jake Cherry), a frightened kid nicknamed Milk, and his pal Vincent (Brian Gilbert, played later by Tracy Morgan) are caught up in the still unsolved deaths of a couple of junkies. The plot isn't all that credible or compelling, but it's rendered nearly unintelligible by Montiel's messy technique and chaotic narrative choices. Not recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary with writer-director Dito Montiel and executive producer-editor Jake Pushinsky, deleted scenes (6 min.), and trailers. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a disappointing film.] (F. Swietek)