Wunderkind filmmakers used to make sad gangster movies like Little Odessa

One such gangster is Joshua (Tim Roth), one of those stoic hitman types who returns to his old neighborhood of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, back to the enclave of Russian Jews from whom he became a pariah. His biggest problem isn’t the job he’s called back to pull—the shooting of an Iranian jeweler—but the family who pushed him out years ago. His nemesis? The abusive father (Maximilian Schell) who’s washed his hands of him. His lure? His dying mother (Vanessa Redgrave), suffering from a brain tumor. And his weakness? His kid brother Reuben (Edward Furlong), a truly American teen dwelling, like the children of Tony Soprano, on the fringes of this anachronistic way of life.

Across the frozen tundra of New York, Joshua embodies physical violence even in loving moments. Roth is always pushing and kicking and slapping, whether it’s manifesting in the affectionate bullying of his younger brother or the simmering rage pointed at his dad. It’s no wonder Joshua became an enforcer; violence is his language, and he’s been instructed in it since birth. It’s something still present for Reuben, the only remaining target of their father’s belt, and something said father willfully ignores.

In Little Odessa‘s best scene, Schell’s character—in bed with his mistress as his wife dies of brain cancer—laments how his sons turned out. He defends himself, saying that he did all the right things in raising them, reading bedtime stories and introducing them to the piano. The camera stays locked on his face, slowly zooming in during this unbroken yet heartbroken take. It’s quiet and mournful and more than a little delusional as he protests too much. The cycle of violence is never more clear than in this peaceful moment, in the omission of culpability. How could his oldest son turn out to be a killer, the shame of the community? The answer is obvious to all but him.

Later, in a climactic moment when he tells Joshua “I don’t need a gun to be a man,” the underexplored irony of this pride undercuts the tragic scene. The conflict between father and son, and their different ethical lines in the sand, is never much more than a suggestion outside of these sequences, and one that’s always pushed aside to make space for crime-thriller plot—not to mention the dying mom, the impressionable teen, the doomed girlfriend. Fatalism is a family affair in Little Odessa, which, given its 98-minute runtime, means that Gray’s ominous tonal brushstrokes are broad and hurried.

Yet, that encompassing hellishness, caught in the icy winter weather and the roaring flames of the dump’s furnace, is evoked with more confidence than any individual character. Little Odessa traps its tormented ensemble, but also traps its community of Jewish immigrants—not just damning them to a fate of constant wandering, striving, and thankless persisting, but one that, if they’re not careful and principled, will lead them to put each other into an oven’s fire. It’s a despondent, almost mopey movie, a Mourner’s Kaddish praying for souls beyond saving. That’s a melodramatic thought, a young man’s take on an old man’s regrets. But it’s also the first step for Gray’s chilly, emotionally rich American crime dramas, like The Immigrant, which would find a muse in Joaquin Phoenix, depth in their stories, and nuance in their pain.