Looking for Kitty

Director: Edward Burns

Since the release of his indie smash The Brothers McMullen, the career of Edward Burns has been filled with ups and downs—I’ve always been mixed on his work but found a lot to cheer about in his latest, intimate film Looking for Kitty. In the movie, Burns portrays a private detective who’s like a man from another era or at least a man from another film—doing it as he says, “the way Bogie woulda done it”-- Burns’s main character loves his city for its holdouts of old architecture and has a lot to say about his blue collar pride in the working man sticking it to the rich, his belief that he can feel bad enough about himself without the help of the Catholic church and his distrust of the current Republican administration. Needless to say, Burns is at his best when penning unique dialogue and the film is filled with it—we instantly like his character yet as an actor, he doesn’t shine quite as brightly as unlikely leading man David Krumholtz who hires Burns to track down his missing wife. The film recalls Burns’s main influence Woody Allen in its beautiful shots of New York City and jazzy score and fans of Jim Jarmusch’s moody character pieces like Broken Flowers will definitely enjoy Kitty. Note: Perhaps it’s only the DVD I rented but the closed captioning button was on accidentally and I noticed that the dialogue placed on the disc came not from Looking For Kitty but rather from another Think Film release, Down in the Valley starring Edward Norton. The only reason I knew this was because I’d recently seen the other film and recognized the modern cowboy dialogue at once. It’s an interesting but annoying flaw for those needing the captioning.