DINNER RUSH
Unusually stylish, pleasingly authentic indie drama set in a TriBeCa restaurant.
Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (violence, sexuality). At the 42nd Street E Walk, the Lincoln Square, the Kips Bay, others.
THE opening-credit scenes of “Dinner Rush” do not augur well: First, you see a bunch of old goombah-type guys sitting around a cafe table grousing about the bookmaking and restaurant businesses; then, a man gunned down to the sound of Italian opera.
But just as you resign yourself to witnessing a parade of Italian-American Mafia clichés, the film becomes something fresher and much more interesting.
“Dinner Rush” is, for the most part, a witty, well-acted, visually gorgeous ensemble drama set in a TriBeCa restaurant that focuses with a documentary’s clarity on its inner workings and on the characters who, on one particularly important night, are working or eating there.
Directed by commercial and music video veteran Bob Giraldi, and written by Rick Shaughnessy and Brian Kalata, it presents the restaurant world more vividly and authentically than any modern film except, perhaps, “Big Night.”
Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant kitchen will be gratified by the realism of the filmmakers’ depiction of life on the hot line, especially the way tension builds as the orders start flooding in. (The only flaw this former restaurant worker noticed was a slightly unrealistic cleanliness.)
But then this wonderful verisimilitude is not so surprising: It turns out director Giraldi actually owns the TriBeCa restaurant Gigino, and filmed much of “Dinner Rush” there rather than on a sound stage.
Danny Aiello plays Louis, the owner of the restaurant, who has long used the establishment as a base for bookmaking. His son Udo is the head chef.
By cooking elaborate (rather 1980s-style) nouvelle Italienne dishes – much to his father’s disgust – Udo has made the restaurant a trendy hit.
He bitterly resents his father’s refusal to at least make him a partner in the business.
Other characters in some kind of conflict are Duncan (Kirk Acevedo from TV’s “Oz”), the other senior chef, who is having an affair with perceptive maitresse d’ Nicole (Vivian Wu) and whose enormous gambling debts have got him in trouble with Black and Blue, two mobsters from Queens (Mike McGlone, from “The Brothers McMullen,” and Alex Corrado).
Upstairs in the dining room, the waitresses, including tough Marti (Summer Phoenix), have to deal with the hoods plus a table of art-world types like snooty Fitzgerald (the excellent Mark Margolis, also from “Oz”).
All the performances are nicely vivid, including turns by Jamie Harris as a bartender and trivia genius, John Corbett as a mysterious Wall Streeter and Sandra Bernhard as a creepy, crazy restaurant critic. And the food looks delicious.