GLORIA, written & directed by John Cassavetes, gets applause as a showcase for his wife Gena Rowlands, 49, who plays the brassy title dame, the ex-mistress of a gangster, whose underlings are pursuing her thru seamy sections of New York City, incurring a number of casualties in the process: somewhere along the line Gloria learned how to shoot, straight and with intent to cause harm. When she’s not in movement (afoot, cabs, bus, train) or in firing position, she’s snapping wise at anyone who asks for it. Which is pretty much everybody.

The Bronx, not the sight-seeing part. Poised to turn informer, a mob accountant and three members of his family are shotgunned into silence. Before feared goons arrive, the sap foists his six year old son ‘Phil’ (John Adames, 7, debut) onto apartment neighbor Gloria, along with a book containing evidence the law needs. With luck and pluck, the hard case moll and her mouthy, protesting charge repeatedly manage to evade and/or best the hoods, but sooner or later good fortune and a supply of bullets will dry up. Early on she declares “I hate kids.” Regarding the particular squirt in question, you may well share the sentiment.

“Just don’t be phony. I hate that.”  A case of the screenplay self-owning.

Cassavetes: “I wrote this story to sell, strictly to sell. I really didn’t want to do that movie. Columbia insisted I direct it…. Look, I’m not very bright. I wrote a very fast-moving, thoughtless piece about gangsters. And I don’t even know any gangsters.” Allotted $4,000,000, the biggest budget he’d ever have on something he directed, Cassavetes drove his closest brush to marketable commercialism thru on narrative momentum, telling choices of locales and first & foremost in the creative energy of the/his leading lady.

An actor works the given material with what they’ve got—their skill set, innate or practiced to perfection, and under the guidance or command of the director. Luckily, Rowland brought the talent needed to combat her husband’s nonsensical script and his crucially wrong pick for the boy. She even drew an Oscar nomination. The dialogue is a joke, Cassavetes stream of consciousness blathering of the sort that can get a pass when pros like Peter Falk are chewing it up, but little Adames is woefully unequipped: he’s gratingly awful. Walloping him—while tempting, who says you have to like every little kid?—is, okay, unfair, since the blame for selecting him over a reported 1,000 others (and sticking with him, a few takes ought to have been enough to convince a deaf person) rests with the director.

Overlong at 121 minutes, placing 123rd at the box office in 1980, the US gross tabbing $4,062,000. Bill Conti’s variegated score deserves a better movie. Buck Henry and Julie Carmen put across nervous tension and rising panic as Phil’s doomed parents. Later you can quick spot Val Avery, Tom Noonan and Sonny Landham. At one point there’s a meaningless cameo from cult tough guy/vetted asshole Lawrence Tierney.  A remake turned up nineteen years later, with Sidney Lumet directing Sharon Stone.

* Once bitten—the acting bug didn’t bite again for John Adames: this was his one & only shot. The adult Mr. Adams (54 at the time this was written) later managed Soho Billiards in Manhattan. The establishment closed in 2012.

Rowland’s Oscar nomination (she’s good, not great) seems an Academy sop for passing over her scalding immersions in A Woman Under The Influence and Opening Night. At any rate, none of the nominees had much chance to nix the vibe from Sissy Spacek’s Coal Miner’s Daughter.