Bang the Drum Slowly (2003, DVD)

Bang the Drum Slowly has all the right ingredients for a big American movie success--baseball, good guys, bad guys, terminal illness and a young Robert DeNiro. Unfortunately, this 1974 film doesn't quite make the "Big" status, , but Mark Harris' screen play of his own novel does have a lot going for it. DeNiro, at this early stage of his career, shows germinal brilliance, and clearly exhibits the talent for playing any role--not just the grim mobster or monster type, and show any emotion you can name, and in combinations you never thought possible.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The title refers to a folk song popular in the '70's, called, I believe, "The Streets of Laredo," in which a young man shot down in his prime is being buried and the musicians at his funeral are being called upon to "bang the drum slowly." In the case of the film, DeNiro's character Bruce Pearson is a young, unsophisticated catcher with the New York team who's been befriended by the star pitcher, Arthur Wiggin, played with great good looks but little emotion by a young Michael Moriarty of later Law and Order fame.

Pearson, we learn at the film's beginning, in terse, clipped scenes and dialogue, has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. His friend Wiggin walks him through the last season of his career with gentleness and brotherliness, always attempting to keep the facts secret so as not to damage the yong man's career or short remaining life. Ironically, the team has not been doing well, as players pit themselves against one another, "ragging" each other and bickering, until Pearson's secret, unbeknownst to him, comes out.

Gradually, each tough guy on the baseball team, touched by their teammate's plight, turns around. Characters played in their salad days by actors Vincent Gardenia, Danny Aiello and a host of other familiar male feature film actors begin to bond around their common feelings, turning the team into a winner, even as the debillitated Pearson fights to play out his final game.

The baseball scenes are fun, and several scenes of men reaching out in their awkward "male" ways are all the more touching. But Michael Moriarty drags the film down with a colorless performance, and a sub plot line,involving a prostitute who has Pearson in her clutches in order to garner his life insurance money when he's gone, is left dangling.

The film is not Casablanca, but it's a baseball story in my opinion that ranks with Field of Dreams, which has its own brakes and low points. Seeing in their early careers the actors we all know and who have grown tremendously in the last 25 years is worth it. The plot moves, has its turning points and climax, and its sad little resolution. The original musical score by Stephen Lawrence is pleasant, and so '70's you can't help but hum along. Director John Hancock might have staged some of the locker room scenes with sharper images, better grouping and camera work, etc. But this is not a bad evening of viewing for a video you can probably borrow from the library as I did, or at the least from your local video store.

Besides, as Wiggin says, after placing flowers on his friend's grave, "I rag nobody."