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Illtown Review: Thug life has never looked as lush -- or as unbelievable -- as it does in Nick Gomez's doggedly idiosyncratic crime saga. "Quirky" doesn't begin to describe the contradictions at play in this Miami-set tale of drugs, honor, and betrayal, where Michael Rapaport's smooth, taciturn, generally benevolent drug lord Dante gets a comeuppance -- deserved or not -- that sends shock waves through his placid upper-middle class life. Simultaneously surreal and hyperreal, Gomez's work on Illtown belongs to the Long Island-indie school of direction (see also Hal Hartley and Jon Jost), where dialogue and narrative take a backseat to genre subversion and dreamy stylization. Though the script hems closely to the flamboyant-lunatic school of gangster pictures -- replete with a jarring, Pacino-wannabe supporting performance by Tony Danza -- Gomez's overall tone is that of minor-key lament. It may not satisfy patrons of the Scorsese school of ironic-realist bloodletting, but Illtown's deliberate, existential take on crime prefigures much of the stellar, breakthrough work he would accomplish on individual episodes of HBO's The Sopranos. Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

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