Let the Devil Wear Black
"There's something rotten in the City of Angels," claims the video  box. Sure enough, under the dysfunctional dealings of a family business is  the story ofHamletretooled for the twilight world of nocturnal L.A. Jack  (Jonathan Penner, who cowrote the screenplay with director Stacy Title) is spending a joyless break from graduate school to deal with his father's  sudden death. He's disconnected from his unstable lover (Mary-Louise  Parker), the daughter of family lawyer Philip Baker Hall, and his mom  (Jacqueline Bisset), a withdrawn alcoholic who has let his "2-watt" Uncle Carl (Jamey Sheridan) manage the family fortune. When a mysterious figure  tells him that Carl murdered his father, Jack's unsettled feelings are  thrown into a restless rage. This official Slamdance 1999 selection is  never as moving or insightful as Michael Almereyda's Wall StreetHamletwith Ethan Hawke, but Title makes the most of this free  adaptation, and drives the film with the simmering energy of a frantic,  wound-up hero. It's surprising how well the story lends itself to the  double-crossing and devious betrayal of modern neo-noir, only periodically  stopping for a Shakespearean rumination (the "Alas, poor Yorick" speech  becomes a meditation on a skull fragment, the remains of a brutal  execution-style murder). Title makes the fatal architecture of  Shakespeare work beautifully and unpretentiously in a modern context,  creating a modest but satisfying gritty little thriller.--Sean Axmaker