City Hall (film)

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2009)

City Hall

Directed by	Harold Becker
Produced by	Harold Becker Kenneth Lipper Charles Mulvehill Edward R. Pressman
Written by	Kenneth Lipper Paul Schrader Nicholas Pileggi Bo Goldman
Starring	Al Pacino John Cusack Bridget Fonda Danny Aiello David Paymer and Martin Landau
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography	Michael Seresin
Editing by	David Bretherton Robert C. Jones
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures^[1]
Release date(s)	February 16, 1996
Running time	111 min.
Country	US
Budget	$40 000 000
Gross revenue	$33 300 000

City Hall is a 1996 film directed by Harold Becker. Al Pacino and John Cusack star as a Mayor of New York and his idealistic deputy mayor.

The plot follows the aftermath of the death of a boy caught in the crossfire of a shootout between a drug dealer and a detective.

According to the website BoxOfficeMojo.com, the film grossed an estimated $20 million in the U.S.

1 Plot
2 "Ripped From the Headlines"
3 Cast
4 External links
5 References

Plot

John Pappas is the mayor of New York and has far more grand ambitions, including the governor's office and the White House. His loyal deputy mayor is Kevin Calhoun, a young man from Louisiana who grew up loving politics.

One day, an off-duty police detective named Eddie Santos is ambushed by a young criminal named Tino Zapatti. They kill each other in a shootout, with a stray bullet also causing the death of an innocent small boy named James Bone.

An investigation leads to a question as to why Judge Walter Stern, an old friend of the mayor's, had set Zapatti free on probation for a recent crime rather than send him to jail. Legal aid Marybeth Cogan, meanwhile, attempts to see that Santos' widow receives his full benefits, but there seems to be a conspiracy to paint the slain detective as less than honest.

Calhoun digs for the truth. He encounters Frank Anselmo, a Brooklyn politician who has connections to organized crime boss Paul Zapatti, the uncle of the cop-killer. Anselmo plants money to smear the detective's good name.

The deputy mayor and Cogan continue to seek the truth from a number of sources, including Santos' partner and another Zapatti relative. After the murder of probation officer Larry Schwartz, they ultimately come to the conclusion that Judge Stern had to be on the take.

Pappas agrees that Stern must resign. The scandal snowballs to the point that Anselmo is instructed by Paul Zapatti to "take the pressure off" himself, by which he means commit suicide rather than become an informer or go to jail. To protect his family, Anselmo shoots himself.

The scandal is nearly at an end, but Calhoun knows one more thing -- his idol, the mayor, is also involved. He is the one who put Stern together with Anselmo to receive a bribe and leave the young Zapatti on the street. Calhoun soon tells Pappas there is only one choice -- to quit as mayor and leave politics for good.

"Ripped From the Headlines"

Elements of the story are loosely based on the tumultuous politics of New York City in the mid-1980s. Emerging from a crippling near bankruptcy, the city enjoyed modest success under the leadership of popular mayor Ed Koch. Democratic Queens borough president Donald Manes was a popular politician who turned his role into more of a proactive office, rather than ceremonial. A series of corruption investigations revealed he was using his office to orchestrate various kickback schemes. Many of his associates were forced to resign or faced prosecution. The result of these 1986 investigations led Manes to have a nervous breakdown, and eventually commit suicide. Mayor Ed Koch's popularity was shaken by the Queens borough president's suicide and the indictment of his associates. Further investigations revealed no connection between Koch and Manes' kickback schemes. While the plot of City Hall uses a child's wrongful death and cover-up, the dramatic investigation of an equally powerul mayor (Pappas) and boro president (Anselmo) draw many similarities.

Cast

Al Pacino as Mayor John Pappas
John Cusack as Kevin Calhoun
Danny Aiello as Frank Anselmo
Bridget Fonda as Marybeth Cogan
Tony Franciosa as Paul Zapatti
Martin Landau as Judge Walter Stern
David Paymer as Abe Goodman
Richard Schiff as Larry Schwartz

External links

City Hall at the Internet Movie Database
Mayor Papas' Eulogy in Text and Audio from AmericanRhetoric.com

References

^ Company credits for City Hall (1996), IMDb

v • d • e Films directed by Harold Becker

1970s	The Ragman's Daughter (1972) · The Onion Field (1979)

1980s	The Black Marble (1980) · Taps (1981) · Vision Quest (1985) · The Boost (1988) · Sea of Love (1989)

1990s	Malice (1993) · City Hall (1996) · Mercury Rising (1998)

2000s	Domestic Disturbance (2001)