The Birthday Cake Review

The Birthday Cake: Movie Review

Today we are reviewing a Movie called “The Birthday Cake” and the movie is rated “R”. It’s an hour and 33 minutes movie.

In a nutshell Giovanni who’s played by David Mazus brings a birthday cake baked by his loyal mother played by Lorraine Bronco to a memorial celebration for the 10th anniversary of his father’s mysterious death hosted by his uncle played by Val Kilmer, a Brooklyn mafia boss. His life begins to change as he pieces together, what really happened to his father many years ago.

Coming face to face with violence that he’s been trying to avoid his whole life the dramatic thriller is directed by Giannopoulos as his feature film directorial debut.

Things we liked about the film

First of all Mcgregor is adorable and he’s wonderful in this film as expected and rumor has it that he filmed his scenes in only three days. The movie feels like a 1990s gangster movie reunion and features a great cast with David Mazus, Lorraine Bronco, William Fitchner, Ashley Benson, Aldous Hodge, Penn Badgley, Vincent Pastore, Louis Guzman, Jeremy Allen White, Paul Sorvino, Emery Cohen, Marla Maples and more.

We think Shiloh Fernandez was the perfect geo, young and naively innocent. We’d never seen him in anything before but now he was perfect as he looked genuinely Italian for the role. He’s actually half Portuguese and half Russian.

Also New York City is one of the characters in a movie. You really get a flavor for the city in this film. The director stated that “New York City can be portrayed in a million different ways and has a fabric that is incomparable”. We completely agree the director tried to create a film in real time so we get to experience things as geo does as he makes his way from his mother’s house to his uncle’s house while carrying a birthday cake.

We loved watching geocity and the world through his eyes as he walks through the streets and comes across FBI informants, friends, relatives, a bachelorette party, strip club, patrons, store owners and many more people.

Some scenes didn’t necessarily give new information but they offered a big taste of geo’s colorful surroundings. The taxi driver scene was hilarious and the standout in humor for the movie although the movie really is more of a dramatic thriller.

The film does an excellent job painting a picture of the glory days when the mob ruled the streets of the big apple yet the movie is set in modern day Brooklyn. if you’re a fan of the sopranos that popular TV show that won a ton of Emmys.

You’re going to love this Lorraine Bronco and Vincent Pastore both starred in that popular TV series which won 21 primetime Emmy awards and received 111 nominations when everything was said and done.

There were a few things that could have been better

People don’t really enjoy watching movies about people who live in the gutter. This movie is extremely well done felt like the need to shower after watching the movie because everybody was so bad and icky however it’s done well.

It was also really heartbreaking to see Val Kilmer as he struggles in the aftermath of his real life throat cancer. It’s so good for him for getting back out there in movies even though it’s really uncomfortable to watch him when we think of the godfather and his original speech impediment. We could say it was fitting that this mob boss had another kind of a physical speech impediment anyway.

Also Read: Fatherhood Movie Review

By the time the end of the movie came around we wanted more details so the movie kind of ended suddenly. We thought to give some tips for parents first. This movie is not appropriate for kids and kids really would be bored anyway. There’s a lot of bloody violence, there’s some profanity including crude language and f-bombs point-blank murder with blood splatters.

You see topless woman at a strip club and there are some subtitles that need to be read so little kids wouldn’t be reading those and again you don’t want your kids watching this movie. Some themes that are illustrated well and lessons learned are about family, loyalty, community, revenge and even integrity.

Whenever we watch movies, we note down the funny and interesting lines so that it can be shared with you. You can get “a birthday cake” taste of this movie so we put them on Putlocker.

One of the funny lines that we noted down was spoken by Sophia played by Lorraine Bronco. They’re talking about this one guy and she says, “Well he might be a cop but that doesn’t mean he’s a good one” and then the idea of what’s a good cop is a little vague and that’s also funny. There were lots of interesting lines. One is spoken by Ewan Mcgregor, in fact he’s the narrator in the movie itself and he says, “With tragedy comes strength”. Then Veto played by Vincent Pastore says family was an option loyalty was essential.

We didn’t have a choice but to lean on each other and that’s really the crux of the film is, where your loyalties lie all right.

Final Review: The Birthday Cake

With everything said and done the movie review grade we’re giving this is a ‘B+’. We think there will be many people who really enjoy this film and the mobster life that it portrays. The characters are very well defined and there are some valuable lessons learned in the movie as well.

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