Rent Norman (2016)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
Norman Oppenheimer (Richard Gere) lives a lonely life in the margins of New York City power and money, and strives to be everyone's friend. His incessant networking leads him nowhere until he ends up befriending a young but charismatic politician, Micha Eshel (Lior Ashkenazi), at a low point in his life. Three years later, the politician becomes the Prime Minister of Israel. Norman uses Eshel's name to leverage his biggest deal ever: a series of quid pro quo transactions linking the Prime Minister to Norman's nephew (Michael Sheen), a rabbi (Steve Buscemi), a mogul (Harris Yulin), his assistant (Dan Stevens) and a treasury official from the Ivory Coast. Norman's plans soon go awry, creating the potential for an international catastrophe he must struggle to prevent. 'Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer' is a comedic and compassionate drama of a man whose downfall is rooted in a human frailty all too easy to forgive - a need to matter. - Actors:
- Richard Gere, Lior Ashkenazi, Michael Sheen, Steve Buscemi, Yehuda Almagor, Neta Riskin, Josh Charles, Dan Stevens, Harris Yulin, Doval'e Glickman, Tali Sharon, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Isaach De Bankolé, Miranda Bailey, D.C. Anderson, Andrea Cirie, Scott Shepherd, Bern Cohen, Andrew Polk, John Thomas Cramer
- Directors:
- Joseph Cedar
- Producers:
- Miranda Bailey, Lawrence Inglee, David Mandil, Oren Moverman, Eyal Rimmon, Gideon Tadmor
- Writers:
- Joseph Cedar
- Aka:
- Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer
- Studio:
- Sony
- Genres:
- Drama, Thrillers
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Reviews (10) of Norman
Slow, dull but oddly watchable! - Norman review by CP Customer
It was hard to know what to make of this film. The plot was obviously going only one direction. Richard Gere worked hard to perform a character that repeated the same gestures and movement.
I thought there might be more to this, but there wasn't!
Very disappointing - Norman review by LB
No wonder it only lasted a week at the cinema
. Teious, boring and meandering and Richard Gere was not on form or may be it was the script.
Nearly a good film - Norman review by RD
Nearly but not quite a good film. The problem is the central character, Norman, who is one of those people that exist by networking and telling lies to get into higher levels of society and hopefully earn a living by putting others in touch who can make deals giving him a cut. Charming and a little mischievous, he exists in a cloud of vagueness and nobody really knows what he does. As a central character this vagueness makes for a difficult plot, and as a result the poor audience are often left wondering what on earth he is doing and where it's all going.
The first half is slow and meanders along, he befriends an Israeli politician and that's about all. The politician becomes Prime Minister after three years and then remembers Norman (hooray), and the plot then starts to develop as the politician is embroiled in a corruption scandal which then becomes the climax of the film. Big problem, this scandal is glossed over and like the early part of the film, the audience is lef feeling like it's being kept out of the story instead of being involved. That's the whole climax we've been waiting for throughout all the film which is then hidden and screwed up. A real disappointement.
The acting however, is good all round and Richard Gere makes a good Norman. The editing is good, and the dialogue is intelligent and well written with some excellent Jewish characters, and the photography is good so we nearly have a good film, but giving the audience such a skimpy plot and hiding so much involvement especially right at the end stops any real enjoyment.
As an analogy, you know the first glass of sparkling wine that is poured when you open a bottle? It's full of foam and looks like a drink but is actually completely foam and bubbles with no actual drink under it all? Well that's this film.