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Diggers

Review By: Dan Deevy
DanDeevy@TheCinemaSource.com

As one of the increasingly rare native New Yorkers around these days, I’m always thrilled whenever I hear about films being shot here. Yeah the whole Spider Man thing was cool, but the real thrill for me is when smaller, more indie style films are here on location. Some how with the lower budget and smaller physical scope, the authenticity of New York comes through even more clearly. With this film, it was an added bonus for me as most of it was filmed right where I grew up in good ol’ Staten Island. Where better to film the 70’s than in a place where parts of it are still stuck there!

Diggers is a small, sweet movie with a huge wonderful cast of characters. They’re not trying to re-invent the wheel here or conjure up some convoluted circuitous story that’s inherently esoteric and difficult to follow. They just wanted to tell a simple story about what life was like for a group of people living on Long Island in the 70’s as automation and big companies began to replace the ‘mom & pop’ style businesses of claming that had been the town’s main focus for decades.

Written by Ken Marino, the son of a Long Island Digger himself, the truthfulness and honesty of the script resonates throughout the piece. The story centers around four childhood friends; Hunt, played by Paul Rudd, is the one who never felt quite at home in this small fishing town, Cons (Josh Hamilton) is the stoner philosopher of the group who thinks all problems can be solved with the right amount of recreational drugs, Lozo (Ken Marino) is the family man with a bunch of kids that drive him crazy and finally Jack, played by an extra buff Ron Eldard, is the ladies man about town.

The recent death of his father and the affections of a visiting city dweller (Lauren Ambrose) have Hunt reconsidering his life and the choices he’s made to remain at home. The fact that more and more of the water is being claimed by a big company called South Shell, has the rest of the town face to face with the choice of bankruptcy or closing up the smaller shops and going corporate. This hits Marino’s character the hardest with his wife Julie (Sarah Paulson) and kids to think about. His surly loudmouth behavior and her stead fast response to it all likens back to a 70’s version of Ralph and Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners. It’s a wonderful relationship that leaves you believing in true love again by the end; and it has his character, initially the most abrasive, ultimately becoming the most compelling.

Maura Tierney of TV’s ER also deserves mentioning as she turns in a great performance as Hunt’s recently divorced and newly sexually frisky ...