Joe May is a small man in a small world, and that world is getting smaller by the minute. After spending seven weeks in the hospital, May (Dennis Farina), a dapper, small-time hustler, dons his treasured leather jacket along with his carefully cultivated persona as a player, and steps out into a winter Chicago afternoon. And that’s when life begins to crumble, for May has no family to speak of and no friends. His apartment has been rented during his absence to a young single mother and her daughter. His car has been towed and sold at auction. His whole life is contained in one small duffel bag, and he’s got less than $500 to his name. The shrewd guy working the street has turned into the guy who is simply on the street.
But though homeless, May is not without hope—he knows his big score is right around the corner. In fact, it’s been right around the corner for the last 40 years. May tries to get back into his groove selling stolen electronics for the local crime boss. While he sees himself at the top of his game, the rest of the neighborhood has him pegged as a relic, or perhaps as a bit of local color. (Even his neighborhood bar has been gentrified and no longer feels like home.) When May is taken in temporarily by the young mother who has rented his apartment, he’s charmed by her young daughter, but careful to keep his distance emotionally. It’s not hard to guess the rest: The Last Rites of Joe May isn’t a new story or a particularly remarkable one. (In fact, the plot is surprisingly similar to Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 masterpiece The Wrestler.) But this most recent offering by director-writer Joe Maggio is simple and direct, and Maggio’s screenplay and wise directorial choices raise the diminutive Joe May from the mean streets and present him as a hero—if heroes can be small. To May’s former cronies in Chicago, he’s still a nobody in a badly out-of-date leather coat that’s showing plenty of wear around the edges. To those who find themselves in need of his help, he’s still a nobody, but he’s a nobody in shining armor, and that’s enough.
Every great story is, at its core, a tale of redemption. As its title implies, The Last Rites of Joe May is no exception. The brilliance of this particular story, however, is that Maggio does not turn Joe May into Everyman, ready to avenge wrongdoing and saving himself in the process. Instead, Joe May is NoMan, a barely felt ripple in his rapidly shrinking pond of a world.
What saves the movie from cliché is an outstanding performance by Farina. As May, Farina is meticulously groomed, ready for action but mired in the ’80s. The world has changed too quickly, and Joe May just hasn’t kept up. It would have been easy for Farina to play May as a confused, almost bumbling, man-out-of-time. Instead, Farina’s May is constantly searching, always looking for an angle in a tough, cold neighborhood where there are no angles left to find. Maggio also sees the darkly comic side to Joe May’s life. (A subplot about a leg of lamb is hilarious, yet so tragic it’s hard not to feel guilty about snickering.)