MOVIE REVIEWS : City Mauls, N.Y. to L.A. : The Remake of ‘Night and the City’ Sounds Unbeatable, but Lands Wide of Its Mark

“Night and the City” is film noir lite. A movie that wants to be hard-hitting and gritty but lacks the stomach for the job, it meanders through what should be a lean and focused narrative and ends up more of a letdown than anything else.

Like an athlete who has all the tools but can’t function in competition, “Night and the City” (citywide) sounds unbeatable on paper. It stars Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange, its title as well as its premise of a small-time scrambler’s attempt to be somebody come from a respected 1950 film, and it’s been updated by Richard Price, currently the hottest of mean-streets screenwriters. Even its second-time director, Irwin Winkler, best known as a producer (everything from “Rocky” to “Raging Bull”), got respectful notices for “Guilty by Suspicion,” his debut film.

The original Harry Fabian (played by Richard Widmark) was a nightclub tout, and Price has wisely changed him here to a fast-talking, low-rent attorney, the type of legal hustler who has more bravado than sense and is capable of getting in over his head without half-trying.

A regular at Boxers, a bar in Manhattan, Fabian (De Niro) specializes in a brash front. When someone tries to cut him by saying, “If you saw a bird digging up a worm, you’d get the worm to sue for assault,” he smiles and replies, “No, whiplash.” Though he likes to see himself as a shark, someone who has to keep moving to stay alive, the truth is, as a friend points out, “sharks have teeth.”

Yet there beats in the heart of Harry Fabian, “the guy Murphy’s Law ought to be dedicated to,” a yearning for respect. Though boxing in his neck of the woods is controlled by the fierce racketeer Boom Boom Grossman (Alan King), Fabian decides being a promoter is his ticket out of Palookaville. He becomes entranced with the idea of promoting a multiethnic card of local fights, and gets his mistress Helen (Lange), nominally the loving wife of Boxers’ owner Phil Nasseros (Cliff Gorman), to help him with his dream.

While all of this appears promising dramatically, it doesn’t pan out as expected. For one thing, De Niro’s weaselly, chiseling Fabian is a very difficult guy to warm up to, too much of a soul brother to “King of Comedy’s” unloved Rupert Pupkin to get the necessary sympathy for his dreams. At moments, especially during a fine self-defining speech he makes to Boom Boom, we are moved to care about him, but those moments are few and fleeting.

The rest of “Night and the City” (rated R for strong language) is similarly uncertain, caught between trying to be a tough picture and lacking the necessary fortitude to pull it off. Again and again, especially in scenes that are supposed to be hard-edged, “Night” sinks into the comfortable precincts of a kind of Manhattan fairy tale, trying to get you to believe its characters are in serious jeopardy with one hand while clandestinely assuring you with the other that it’s not really necessary to worry at all.

Given this, it’s no surprise that the acting in “Night and the City” is all over the map. Both King and Jack Warden, who provides easily the film’s strongest performance as Boom Boom’s memorably crusty older brother, give traditional edgy noir readings that seem to be coming from a different movie than the softer, more diffuse stuff being served up by De Niro and Lange.

The resulting unreality, which extends even to the film’s basic premise finally sinks this enterprise. (Who in his right mind would even think of promoting boxing as a way out in this day and age or get anyone to help him if he did?)

Director Winkler clearly has a love for the unforgiving streets of New York and the films they inspired, some of which he even produced, but the temperament to direct a convincing replica himself, not to mention the force needed to put forward a unified vision and bring wayward actors to heel, are not much in evidence.

‘Night and the City’

Robert De Niro: Harry Fabian

Jessica Lange: Helen

Cliff Gorman: Phil

Alan King: Boom Boom Grossman

Jack Warden: Al Grossman

Eli Wallach: Peck

A Tribeca production, in association with Penta Entertainment, released by 20th Century Fox. Director Irwin Winkler. Producers Jane Rosenthal, Irwin Winkler. Executive producers Harry J. Ufland, Mary Jane Ufland. Screenplay Richard Price. Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto. Editor David Brenner. Costumes Richard Bruno. Music James Newton Howard. Production design Peter Larkin. Art director Charley Beale. Set decorator Robert J. Franco. Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (strong language).