This film is a blatant rip-off of Bud Schulberg and Elia Kazan's 1954 On the Waterfront. Dennis Leary was in on the writing. He has the lead part.Billy Crudup plays a brief part. Until he's murdered by the Mick Gang Boss who fear he might sing. Shades of Jimmy Doyle.I can see Johnny Friendly, the cops that dog the Irish guys, who are stand-ins for Terry Molloy.I'm not sure they bother with the Irish priest of Karl Malden.There's no Charlie the Gent. There's no girlfriend Edie.But for Edie, there's a couple of cute and nice-looking girls, but Leary's only interested in one of them. At first.There's no waterfront and no pigeons in a coop on the roof.This On the Waterfront has been transposed to Irish Boston. The Irish in question are recent immigrants and first generation people.I get to see parts of Boyleston Street, Beacon Hill and some gritty barrooms that remind me of that Hells Kitchen picture some years ago set near the Five Points in New York, with Sean Penn.The greenish cinematography reminds one of Ford's the Quiet Man.The writing is derivative of the original. Leary and co-author never come up with a single riveting scene. They're not equipped for that.I'm watching a stick-ball hockey scene right after the murder. Leary's toying with Jackie in vague revenge for the murder. When Jackie calls him on it, Leary can't let himself have the showdown so he equivocates with something about doubling a bet.The whole thing backfires on Leary's character. Its the moral equivalent of Terry setting Jimmy Doyle up for his fall off the roof. Leary has backed down to the the gang boss. He winds up taking it out on his girlfriend instead.Bobby O'Grady (Leary) tries to dump Katy for a new classier preppy girl. The classier girl is the other half of Edie Doyle, Jimmy Doyle's sister. Leary's gang of 40 year old 'teenagers' are having trouble getting past the idea of the murder of their cousin.The Mick Boston cops are trying to get one of the O'Grady cousins to crack and finger their cousin's murderer. He's a Mick too, played by Martin Sheen as Officer Hanlon. Now I see where they've parked Karl Malden's priest character. He's in Sheen's Hanlon. Waterfront had two cops, Martin Balsam and Leif Erickson. Only one cop here, but he's got Karl Malden's priest inside him.Leary keeps trying to figure out where he stands morally. Its obvious to the Audience. We've all seen the real On the Waterfront. Then Jackie the gang boss kills another O'Grady. Leary has it figured out now. Unless he does something, he's gonna be next.Nice pat ending. A little bit too pat. Kazan, Schulberg, Charlie the Gent., they couldn't have approved. I can't either. And the boss Jackie would have preferred the fate of Johnny Friendly.

When I first saw Noose (a.k.a. Snitch), I thought it was going to be another one of those 'gangsta' style movies where newbie mobster has a big brother and that big brother has a boss and that boss doesn't like the newbie... Well I was right, but the style of how's it's done adds some spice. This is an average movie though the acting can be considered very good most of the movie...The ending is also quite disappointing because it leaves no questions behind and nothing to talk about... It is done in the most clichéd of ways. It could've delivered a lot more than that.

From the current FBI's 10 Most Wanted List, we have a paralleling movie. As I write this, the Boston Police Dept., State Police and FBI stand indicted as co-conspirators in keeping Whitey Bulger out of the hands of the law. In Charlestown, the code of silence is slowly being broken as more Irish wake up to the fact that mobsterism is for the 'boids'. Yet this movie really awakens you to how insidious the silly hi-jinks of youth (e.g., causing all the car alarms on the street to go off at one time) can really be. These kids then move on up into guilt by association, and slowly get rubbed out by the head mobster they have admired, and who even has the gall to pay for the funerals of those he kills/has killed. It's going on right now, folks, right here in Boston....but just not as much.When the facts are in about Whitey Bulger, No. 1 guy on the FBI's most wanted , whose brother is chancellor of the Univ. of Ma. and formerly president of the Ma. Senate, you'll see a lot more parallels from this movie. The only logic test it failed was, "How could those parents NOT know their son and his buddies were sniffing coke in their home?" This show is ALMOST a documentary of current life in south Boston. As someone with Scotch-Irish ancestry, I think of the Raytheon engineer whose mother took her husband's life insurance and moved to Stoughton from this Irish ghetto ....and marvel at his escape from the degraded lives portrayed here. See it. Take your teen-age kids to see it. Better than Sunday school.

Not many people probably know this, but Ted Demme actually rented out a theatre in LA and had a weekend of free screenings for this film just so people would go to see it. That's a testament to the filmmaker as well as his film. I think Monument Avenue is Demme's stab at Cassavettes and Scorcese and quite a succesful one. Outside of STATE OF GRACE, I don't think I've seen any other Irish 'mafia' films (pardon the classification). You won't find Dennis Leary any better...and for God's sake please take note of the always great Ian Hart, Colm Meany and the bombshell waiting to go off Famke Jansen. Too bad Demme has to make his bread and butter with such mediocre fare as LIFE instead of films like this and BEAUTIFUL GIRLS. He's obviously an actor's director.