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'Opportunists' a gem out of Queens By Jay Carr, Globe Staff, 8/11/2000

When Victor Kelly's landlord sneers at him and calls him a loser in "The Opportunists," the label is not easy to refute. Christopher Walken's Victor, trying inauspiciously to make a living with a car repair shop after serving time for a botched safecracking attempt, slogs around his Sunnyside neighborhood in Queens like a man who asks only to be spared further hammerings. He has put his life back together and achieved what might be called a solid fragility. He knows how easily it could all be taken away from him, how illusory the outward stability in his tight little blue-collar enclave. And yet his back is being broken by depressingly modest debts: $800 here, $1,700 there. Pride forbids him to accept a loan of $2,000 his girfriend had put aside to remodel the tavern she owns.

He knows only one way to quickly get money. As hot and cold running dread fills his veins, he succumbs to a plan by a couple of pals who work as low-rent security guards. They are not the best and the brightest. But, having just been put next to lots of money, they can't resist trying to grab it. It's at this point that "The Opportunists" takes on some of the gritty momentum of "The Asphalt Jungle" - with the asphalt cracked and weed-strewn. Writer-director Myles Connell is Irish, although you'd think he lived in Queens all his life, so easily and thoroughly does he capture a believably idiosyncratic and specific corner of the world.

Walken and Cyndi Lauper, who plays Vic's apprehensive girlfriend, do come from Queens. But the thing that makes their work here so deeply satisfying is not their regurgitation of the speech and gestures of a world they remember well. Rather, it has to do with their innate understanding of the attitudes that give rise to their characters' speech and behavior patterns. Although Vic is not beyond a degree of swagger, he's a guy for whom things mostly have gone wrong, a guy who has learned to be careful and wary. Lauper's Sally, meanwhile, practically doesn't need dialogue. You can see everything she's thinking and feeling on her expressive face. Not that every sound she makes isn't note-perfect. "The Opportunists" is a film that's sensitive to the music of the mundane.

Possibly it's because Connell grew up in Ireland romanticizing America. In the film, his surrogate is a cheeky young immigrant named Michael who shows up on Vic's doorstep, declaring himself the son of Vic's dead uncle Frank back in Ireland, with whom Vic hadn't kept in touch. Michael had heard stories about what a big-time gangster Vic was, and he's jolted to find the truth so deflating. That doesn't stop him from insinuating himself into the fold, especially after he meets Vic's independent-minded grown daughter, Miriam, compellingly played by Vera Farmiga, whose career is going to take off sooner rather than later. Eyes bright with several kinds of greed, Peter McDonald's Michael also writes himself into Vic's safecracking caper, bringing to the job more cockiness than competence.

The gang that couldn't steal straight adds to the flavor and the fun. Donal Logue, so terrific as the unlikely babe magnet in "The Tao of Steve," pungently plays a greasy slob hustler here, the kind of guy who's mouthy with his friends, but likely to implode when confronted by someone outside his safe little circle. Tom Noonan is a huge asset, too, as the seedy safecracking expert to whom Vic turns for a refresher course. "The Opportunists" goes soft in the end, but not ruinously so. Meanwhile, its loose cannons bounce off one another deliciously. To those familiar with his acting only from highly stylized and highly armored gangland kingpins, Walken's beleaguered role, so superbly acted and unexpectedly moving in his appreciation of little comforts and reassurances most of us take for granted, is a revelation.

CHRIS CROSSED Walken offers up caged heat in ''The Opportunists''
Christopher Walken, Cyndi Lauper Rated R

With his chalky pallor and emotionally inscrutable, stoned troublemaker delivery, Christopher Walken has come on like a tortured misfit zombie for so long now that his spookiness is no longer spooky. As an actor, he seems to have never entirely returned from the Russian roulette parlors of ''The Deer Hunter.'' He's our Method Phantom, a figure who haunts the screen with his patented flashes of ''charismatic'' instability.

In The Opportunists, Walken tries to go straight by playing a retired safecracker, a small town ethnic bub named Vic who scrapes together a living as an auto mechanic and treats his barkeep girlfriend, played by a likably no nonsense Cyndi Lauper, with wholesome chivalry. But when his cousin (Peter McDonald) shows up from Ireland, Vic is lured into hatching one more crime. It's a good thing, too, since Walken embodies normalcy like a ghost impersonating flesh; the motions look genuine, but something is missing. ''The Opportunists'' is skillfully made, yet the film would have been better if it had tapped a bit of that Walken madness to bust out of its drab, poky little people symmetries. Grade: C+ -- Owen Gleiberman

Village Voice:

Another darkly brilliant song-and-dance man, Christopher Walken, gets a chance to show the regular-guy side of himself in Myles Connell's nifty little heist movie, The Opportunists. Walken stars as Vic Kelly, a reformed safecracker who's having a hard time making ends meet. Vic's car repair shop doesn't generate enough income to pay the rent on the shabby Queens house where he lives with his grown-up daughter (Vera Farmiga) and also cover the fee for keeping his elderly aunt (Anne Pitoniak) in a nearby private nursing home. Vic takes his responsibilities seriously enough to risk going to prison again and losing the love of his long-term girlfriend (Cyndi Lauper), who owns the neighborhood bar. When a couple of old acquaintances (Donal Logue and Jose Zuniga) and another young man (Peter McDonald)-recently arrived from Ireland and claiming to be Vic's cousin-invite him to join them in a robbery that requires his special safecracking skill, he agrees.

A highly promising first-time director, Connell has a fine-tuned sense of the film's working-class, Irish American, outer-borough milieu and of the people who've lived there all their lives. (The film's only false note is the overly chic cinematography by the usually dependable Teodoro Maniaci.) Although Vic is the focal character, The Opportunists is largely an ensemble piece, and Connell, blatantly appreciative of his terrific cast, allows them to riff off one another in every scene. Both Walken and McDonald seem like men who keep their own counsel, but Walken's gravity and tenderness is amusingly matched to McDonald's boyish impulsivity. And as usual, Logue impresses by seeming more like a real person who wandered onto the screen than like an actor.

More crucial to the success of a heist movie than the timing, logic, and mechanics of the robbery is that the audience be on the side of the robbers, that something of ourselves is at stake in whether or not they pull off the job. The Opportunists delivers an anxious five minutes when we worry that the Robin Hood-like Vic might not get away with what is essentially a victimless crime. Filled with vivid and likable characters, The Opportunists could be the basis for a TV series as captivating as The Sopranos.

A modest, morose slice of life among the down and almost out. Vic Kelly (Christopher Walken) is a small-time safecracker whose last stretch in jail cost him his marriage and nearly ruined his relationship with his now-grown daughter Miriam (Vera Farmiga). Vic is now an auto mechanic, determined to stay on the straight and narrow; he's reconciled with Miriam, started dating local bar owner Sally (Cyndi Lauper), and is paying elderly Aunt Dierdre's (Anne Pitonial) nursing home bills. Unfortunately, he's paying them with rubber checks, the same way he's paying the rent on his auto repair shop. He's too proud to accept Sally's offer of a loan, and two local guys, minimum-wage night security guards Pat (Donal Logue) and Jesus (Jose Zuniga) are pressuring him to join them in what they swear is a no-risk heist. Into this disaster waiting to happen steps Michael (Peter McDonald), a homeless, penniless young Irishman who swears he's Vic's distant cousin. Soon Vic's been coerced into joining Michael, Pat and Jesus in robbing the deposit delivery warehouse where Pat and Jesus work. There's a lot of cash on the premises, some of it of shady origin; Pat and Jesus swear their odious boss won't dare go to the police. It's not spoiling anything to reveal that the heist goes badly - it was bound to. The plot isn't what makes this movie worth watching anyway - it's the performances and the ambiance. First-time feature filmmaker Myles Connell, an NYU grad, was born in Dublin and came to the U.S. as a teenager. His familiarity with Irish immigrant neighborhoods and attitudes is evident, and he gets beautifully modulated performances from his entire cast, including singer Lauper and Walken, who for once isn't playing a walking time bomb. - Maitland McDonagh

I could nitpick (for instance, who hired Christopher Walken's hairdresser?), but why? It's hot. You need air-conditioning. This is a pleasant caper movie, with good chemistry between Walken and Peter McDonald (not quite the idiot he was in I Went Down, but still fine), a chance to see our beloved Cyndi Lauper, a few full laughs and many smiles, nice-looking Vera Farmiga, a Buick Riviera, odd fantasies about Irish Americans (Walken and Farmiga look about as Irish as Sophia Loren), a deliciously seedy cameo by Tom Noonan, and superb set dressing--enough miscellaneous junk to launch a major career on eBay. Opens Fri Aug 11 (Barley Blair)

Christopher Walken is a great choice to work with any first-time director/screenwriter, as he can "sell" any character put in front of him. From a sword-swinging headless horseman in Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow to a wristwatch smuggling Air Force Captain in Tarentino's Pulp Fiction, Walken breathes an air of believability into any persona, which is hardly something that every actor can do. Because of this, the films he is in always seem to be at the very least entertaining, and The Opportunists is no exception to the rule. Set against the backdrop of the Sunnyside, Queens neighborhood of New York, The Opportunists is the story of a man who can't seem to do the right thing, no matter how hard he tries.

Walken plays Victor Kelly, an ex-con turned auto mechanic struggling to be a responsible man, earning an honest living in the hopes of redeeming himself for the lifetime of trouble he has brought down on his small, fractured family. Add to the mix a young man named Michael (Peter McDonald) who appears at his doorstep, claiming to be a cousin from Ireland. Ironically, Michael has come to America to learn from the man he believes is a successful mobster - as legend back home tells it. What he actually finds in Vic is completely different. Vic is a proud man with some heavy financial headaches. Too bullheaded to accept help from his girlfriend (Cyndi Lauper). Vic soon realizes his skills as a mechanic are not nearly as marketable as his safe-cracking skills, and he reluctantly finds himself risking everything for one last shot to save his business and his family.

The Opportunists is the feature debut of Irish-born director Myles Connell, whose only other work appears to be an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Connell sold the idea to producers John Lyons and Tim Perell at the Sundance film festival and has done a good job of penning the script. All the characters seem real, not comical for the sake of levity, not two-dimensional for the sake of clarity, but believable for the sake of the story. And for that, Connell should be commended for a great first effort.

While the pacing of the film seems a bit slow (which is odd, considering the movie is only 90 minutes long) the story being told is fresh enough to keep you in your seat and interested in what is going on on-screen. Of particular note, Cyndi Lauper does surprisingly well opposite Walken, which helps add to the overall believability of the picture. Fresh and entertaining, The Opportunists is a tribute to flawed but worthy men everywhere.

The Opportunists

By Mark Caro

The first we see of Christopher Walken in "The Opportunists," he's fine-tuning a 30-year-old car and listening very carefully to the engine. You can tell by his face that he can tell exactly how well it is running by the nuances of its purr.

It turns out that Victor Kelly, the mechanic played by Walken, has used his ears to make other fine distinctions as well. In his younger days, he had been a safe-cracker, but a stint in prison reformed him. And, from all appearances, he is reformed.

Walken has a reputation for showy roles, but here he conveys a life history of disappointments and no-regrets compromises by the fatigue on his face and his no-nonsense way of talking.

Living with his adult daughter, Miriam (Vera Farmiga), in a working-class neighborhood in Queens, N.Y., Victor is feeling a financial squeeze, the collision of slow business and accumulating bills, including those for the upkeep of his mother in an elder-care home.

He delays payment and makes excuses and promises, which sound not like the alibis of a shifty deadbeat so much as a man trying to meet his obligations without reverting to former ways. But when temptation knocks on such a person's door, answering can be hard to resist.

The knock in this case comes from a younger man, Michael Lawler (Peter McDonald), who appears at his doorstep claiming to be a long-lost cousin from Ireland, the son of Frank Kelly. Victor has never heard of Frank Kelly, but his mother has, so Victor lets Michael stay in a mobile home near his garage.

Michael, however, isn't primarily interested in lodging but in action, and soon he has hooked up with an oily security officer, Pat Duffy (Donal Logue), who has been trying to persuade Victor to help bust into a vault that Pat and his partner (Jose Zuniga) have been guarding overnight. Victor is resistant, but he also is too prideful to accept money from his bar-owner girlfriend (Cyndi Lauper). Pulled in opposite directions by desperation and honesty, he eventually loses his footing.

Many movies explore how good people come to betray their own values, but few make you feel the struggle and ramifications like "The Opportunists"; usually, you sense that the reformed crook or professed non-violent character actually enjoys the chance to rip someone off or explode. First-time writer-director Myles Connell has made a caper movie in which you're aware of the stakes throughout.

That's not to say that "The Opportunists" is grim. It contains ample dry humor and its share of surprising turns, but they operate on a human level rather than with the kind of empty flash we've come to expect from the post-Tarantino crime flicks. In many of those movies, betrayals and twists come out of nowhere, the product of overly clever screenwriting instead of the natural outgrowth of characters' actions. Here, Connell refrains from turning even the biggest lowlifes into cartoons or ballooning targets.

Michael may be a hustler, but McDonald's quietly charismatic performance conveys that there's more going on beneath his placid surface than an impulse to cash in. The obnoxious, greasy-haired Pat would have been an easy character to ridicule or despise, but Connell and the versatile Logue (the overweight lothario of the upcoming "The Tao of Steve") paint him as more of a regular schmo whose desire for a quick score outmatches his ability to pull it off without a hitch.

The rich supporting cast also includes strong work from Lauper and Farmiga as the two tough, caring women in Victor's life, and Tom Noonan as an owlish safe-cracking expert. Even the bit-part cops, including one who buys a stolen VCR from Pat, have dimension.

Still, Walken ultimately carries the tale. He's an actor probably incapable of delivering a dull line reading, and with Connell tempering his show-offy tendencies, he makes Victor one of his most compellingly down-to-earth creations.

"The Opportunists" isn't the sexiest caper film ever made - "Croupier," for one, has more pizazz - but it's a smart independent film that respects its characters and audience. Given what's currently stinking up the multiplexes, this movie presents an opportunity you can't take for granted.
"The Opportunists" 3 Stars (out of 4)

BY ROGER EBERT

Crime movies always seem to have neat endings. There's a chase or a shootout, a trial or a confession. "The Opportunists" is messier than that. It is less a matter of the big payoff than the daily struggle. In the movies, most safecrackers are egotistical geniuses who do it for the gratification. In life, I imagine they're more like Victor Kelly, and they're in it for the money. Not much money at that.

Kelly is played in "The Opportunists" by Christopher Walken, and it's one of his best performances. He's a guy who once screwed up big time, and now he's trying to keep his head down and stay on the straight and narrow. He's dutiful. He visits his Aunt Diedre, he brings her home from the geriatric hospital for a day out, and he tries his best with his daughter Miriam. He has an auto repair shop and is just scraping by.

Enter a visitor from Ireland, Michael Lawler (Peter McDonald), who says he is a cousin. He has heard all about the great master criminal Victor Kelly and wants to team up with him on a job. Victor is not interested, but gives the kid a cluttered mobile home to live in. Things take a turn for the worse. Victor's check bounces at the geriatric hospital, his aunt is about to be evicted, and from the way he says, "I had a setback at work," you can tell that setbacks are his way of life. It isn't long until he has agreed to join Michael and two neighbors (played by Donal Logue and Jose Zuniga) in going after a safe.

The structure of the movie is like a low-rent version of the usual caper film. There is the obligatory rehearsal scene, but held while they're sitting on the living room floor. And the attempt to crack the safe itself is less cool than confused. When things do not go right, watch the way Walken's face absorbs and accepts the inevitable. He isn't even angry. It's more like he knew all along this thing would end badly. Instead of suspense and action, the movie links together a series of uh-oh moments, done with perfect pitch.

The sad thing is, there's a woman who loves him, or could, if he gave her a chance, and would have helped him out if he'd let her. That's Sally Mahon, played straight from the shoulder by Cyndi Lauper. But no, Victor has to make the same mistakes. Meanwhile, Michael from Ireland is getting friendly with Victor's daughter (Vera Farmiga), and that may not end well, either.

It's here the movie resolutely refuses to fly on autopilot. We have seen more than a few crime movies, and we expect things to happen in certain ways. They don't. Without getting into the details, I'll say that a criminal named Mort (Tom Noonan) supplies a kind of input that's refreshingly realistic, and that the aftermath of the safe-cracking job is not at all like Victor, or the police, expect it to be. The final notes of the movie are not tragic or triumphant, but kind of a quiet comeuppance.

"The Opportunists" was written and directed by Myles Connell, an Irishman who developed the project at the Sundance Institute, and you wonder if there's a touch of his character Michael Lawler in him--not the bad stuff, just the knowledge about neediness and the willingness to believe unlikely stories. Certainly he helps Walken create a touching character.

Walken has been so good for so long we take him for granted. Sometimes he plays weirdos and we smile because we know he'll sink his teeth into the role. But he is a gifted classical actor (the first time I saw him, he was in a Eugene O'Neill play), and here he understands Victor Kelly from the inside out.

Victor is not a hero, not a wise guy, not a colorful character, but a workingman who keeps repeating the same mistakes. There is a gentleness to the way the movie regards him. And a tact in the way Walken plays this sad and dignified character without ever feeling sorry for him.

New York Daily News

In "The Opportunists," Christopher Walken looks like he has been plugged into an electrical socket. That his hair stands on end is apt in this low- key comedy, because he plays Vic Kelly, a Queens auto mechanic who's forever astonished by his own bad luck, bad judgment and bungling attempts to go straight.

Vic's checks are bouncing higher than Spaldeens in the playgrounds of Sunnyside, where the action takes place. And he has plenty of bills to pay - for the upkeep of his aged aunt, for the garage where he occasionally mangles cars and for the house where his grown daughter (Vera Farmiga) lives.

There's a business opportunity awaiting his particular expertise - safecracking - but Vic is trying to keep his nose clean for the sake of his family and a future with a promising girlfriend (Cyndi Lauper).

This enjoyable, intelligent little heist movie, written and directed by first-timer Myles Connell, is packed with charismatic character actors, and it's intoxicating to watch them ply their trade. Walken? Well, no surprise, the veteran scene-stealer can make a throwaway shot of driving his car look intriguing.

Then there's Tom Noonan, who really should be seen more often. The tall, gangling actor, who plays a master locksmith who has gone to the dark side, is first introduced with his eyeglasses dangling off one ear. You can see the trouble Noonan went to in order to create the lasting impression of a man steeped in his weird habits.

Donal Logue, who is so adorable as the tubby pickup artist in "The Tao of Steve," plays a local hood who persuades Vic to help him pull off a foolproof heist. It's not so foolproof that it can't be undermined at every step by Michael (Peter McDonald), Vic's green young cousin just over from Ireland.

Also surprisingly good is Lauper - who'd a-thunk it? - as Vic's bartender girlfriend.

Connell's setting is accessible, recognizable and comfortably blue- collar - a bunch of borough guys who are barely a step ahead of the repo man despite their best efforts. The beauty of the story is that, thanks to the genuine location and accents, plus the ensemble work, Vic's predicament and his solution to it seem totally plausible.

New YorkPulse

A QUEENS' CAPER FILM CAPTIVATES Lou Lumenick
08/11/2000 New York Post

Well-acted little seriocomedy about a desperate ex-con (Christopher Walken) who's coaxed into cracking one last safe.Running time: 89 minutes. Rated R. At the Angelika, Houston and Mercer streets.

It isn't often you see a movie these days where (a) Christopher Walken plays a normal human being; (b) the main character is a master safecracker and (c) where a Queens resident is played by a real-life Queens native.

But writer-director Myles Connell's debut film has more going for it than novelty value.

Walken gives a beautifully understated performance as a financially hard-pressed ex-con who is coaxed back into the criminal life by a shady young Irish immigrant (Peter McDonald) who claims to be his cousin.

The movie's high point is their heist - cracking the safe at a security company where they know the owner is skimming the take from his customers.

But "The Opportunists" is no hair-trigger thriller like "Rififi" or "The Asphalt Jungle," though Connell pays homage particularly to the latter movie.

It's a more layered seriocomic character study of quiet desperation - colorfully depicted in the Irish enclave of Sunnyside, Queens.

Cyndi Lauper, a bona-fide Queens native like Walken, gives her best screen performance to date as his no-nonsense girlfriend, from whom he refuses to accept a loan -with dire consequences.

The fine ensemble also includes Vera Farmiga and Anne Pitoniak as Walken's concerned daughter and elderly aunt, respectively. Tom Noonan has a showy cameo as his criminal mentor, who can see disaster looming.

The only discordant note is struck by a pre-"Tao of Steve" Donal Logue, whose accent as a crooked security guard is a few hundred miles off.

''Money changes everything,'' Cyndi Lauper once sang in her cover of the Brains' original, and as Sally, a bar owner in ''The Opportunists,'' she gets to watch that aphorism take on a sad and poky life. Money could change the life of Vic (Christopher Walken), her boyfriend and the picture's protagonist, an ex-felon who might as well sport a ''Born to Lose'' T-shirt.

Vic slaves at keeping his struggling auto repair shop alive. In the opening, he is shown lovingly rubbing down a vintage 70's Riviera, buffing it to a gloss worthy of Teo Maniaci's eye-catching cinematography. This is one of the best-photographed pictures of the year, but not ostentatiously so; the look is organic to the less-than-glamorous badlands of Sunnyside, Queens, where the movie is set.

Myles Connell, who wrote and directed the picture, gives it the sleepy pace of a late fall day when the biggest event turns out to be waiting to see if the sun will break through the gray haze. The film has the ambience of a real neighborhood, but Mr. Connell can't seem to give it substance. Sometimes it seems to be fading away in front of your eyes.

''The Opportunists,'' which opens today at the Angelika Film Center, is meant to be a distinct 180-degree turn from the gritty, tense robbery movies that are generally about nothing but moviemaking -- a respectable choice on the director's part -- but the film feels as small-time as Vic.

Vic is an amiable loser, and Mr. Walken plays the role without the spasms of rage that usually compound the freakishness of his delivery. (His bellowed line ''You're late!'' in ''The Dogs of War,'' the fury rising to a leonine whine on the last word, is a real puzzler.)

Vic is drawn and slightly defeated; Mr. Walken's lost, trembling cadence makes him seem beaten down by his past life of petty crime. He is still in pain over a robbery he commited 20 years ago, one that cost him his marriage and almost his relationship with his daughter (Vera Farmiga).

His failing garage keeps him broke, and he won't take a loan from Sally. Then a distant cousin, Michael (Peter McDonald), arrives from Ireland and persuades Vic to mastermind another crime. ''The regular-citizen thing is not going too good,'' Vic says with Mr. Walken's punctuated diction.

Mr. Walken's twitchy, chilled acting style may be the wrong choice for a vaguely sympathetic leading man, though he is vague. No one else gives the kind of line readings he does, which are hypnotic in their own way; he suggests a stoned Kirk Douglas.

Mr. Connell uses his cast well, and the actors go at the material briskly. Donal Logue and Jose Zuniga, as the security guards who connive with Michael and Vic, are incredibly eager; they watch Vic practice his safecracking as if it were the second overtime of a Knicks playoff game.

All of the younger characters have an antsiness. Michael's pushy curiosity leads to his almost botching things several times. ''I'm starting to think there's something wrong with you,'' Vic says of Michael's idiotic interference. (Mr. McDonald's downcast face gives him a minor resemblance to Mr. Walken.)

The movie is full of characters, notably Mort (Tom Noonan), who gets Vic the equipment he needs to prepare for the robbery. Mort is a third-rate version of the expediters who turn up too often in film noir, and Mr. Noonan plays his crabby meticulousness for comedy. Mr. Noonan practices his craft beautifully, and Mort gives him a chance to return to the comedic work with which he began his career on the stage.

Mr. Connell does well by his actresses, too. Ms. Lauper is so good that her few screen appearances make you want more, and her feistiness makes an impression against Mr. Walken's mannered weightiness. Ms. Farmiga's grounded Miriam is memorable, too. Pieces of ''The Opportunists'' play quite well, enough to make you want to keep an eye on Mr. Connell.
''The Opportunists'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes profanity and mild violence.

Boston Herald

An `Opportunists' not to be missed
by James Verniere
Friday, August 11, 2000 `The Opportunists'' Rated R. At the Kendall Square Cinema.

The tao of hard luck is the subject of Myles Connell's wryly funny, stylishly minimal ``The Opportunists,'' the second film opening today with ubiquitous Donal Logue (``The Tao of Steve'') in the cast. Leading man Christopher Walken triumphs in this Elmore Leonard-like film noir about safecracker-turned-mechanic Vic Kelly, a man who's trying against the odds to go straight.

But, as he himself puts it, ``this regular citizen thing is not going too good.'' Vic owes months of back rent. He's in debt to the convent-run retirement home where his beloved Aunt Diedre (Anne Pitoniak) resides, and the vintage Buick Riviera he has been hired to restore has just burst into flames. Occasion to sin arrives at Vic's Queens, N.Y., door in two forms. One is Michael Kelly (Peter McDonald), a young Irishman claiming to be a cousin from the Old Sod. The other is Pat Duffy (Logue), a dim-witted, low-life thief who sidelines as a security guard at a local armored car company and thinks he's dreamed up the perfect crime.

Writer-director Connell, a Dublin native and director of ``Homicide: A Life on the Streets,'' has a nice, economical style, considerable fluency in Catholic themes and the art of the downtrodden, and enough humor to hold back the darkness.

Connell's interests here are sin, retribution, penance and redemption. The film has a jazzy, hungover, Edward Hopper-ish atmosphere, an urban landscape of lost souls. The oppressiveness of Vic's troubles can be detected in Walken's stooped walk and hesitating delivery of his lines (a Walken trademark). He's a man beaten down by life, but not ready to call it a day.

Besides, there are bright spots in it. One is his grown-up daughter Miriam (Vera Farmiga), whose diffident relationship with her father is grounded in miles of bad road behind them. The other is Sally Mahon (a terrific Cyndi Lauper), as Vic's girlfriend and the owner of the rundown local gin joint.

Walken, a Queens native who has found a comfortable niche for himself playing heavies, often emissaries from hell, nails this role and gives the performance of the year. His Vic isn't as washed-up as he looks. When he disguises himself as a high roller and goes to case the armored car company, he moves with catlike grace (Walken is a dancer by training), tossing the owner's office with an elegantly light touch. In repose, Walken's ravaged visage is a mask of defeat, yet he gives Vic the tragic stature of a once-exceptional man ruined by fate.

The film's second revelation is Lauper, whose Sally might be the year's most irresistible screen goddess. Smart, tough and emanating a sex appeal undimmed by the years of bad luck we imagine she has had, Sally is the woman of a broken man's dreams, and Lauper's kewpie doll voice and bruised-fruit complexion provide fascinating counterpoint to the steeliness and no-nonsense intelligence of the character. Lauper's work here is in the classic noir tradition of Ann Sothern and Joan Blondell.

Also in this film's cast are writer-director Tom Noonan (``The Wife'') as a trainer of criminals and Kate Burton as a nun tired of Vic's excuses. Connell has set his film in a moral universe so ambiguous the cops buy hot VCRs and hire ex-cons to fix their cars. In Connell's world, no one is innocent, and sometimes a robbery isn't a robbery because the thing stolen has already been pinched. In an exceptionally disappointing summer at the movies, ``The Opportunists'' is a genuine sleeper.

Newsday

Christopher Walken leads a fine ensemble in a quietly observed heist drama about an ex-jailbird trying to stay honest in a world that doesn't want to give him a break. Director/writer Myles Connell reworks a much-abused formula with a nose for character and an eye for visuals. With Peter McDonald, Cyndi Lauper. 1:29 (adult situations). At Angelika Film Center, Manhattan.

MYLES CONNELL makes an impressive directing debut with "The Opportunists," one of those contemporary noir dramas in which we are compelled to care about a character whose main talent seems to be for wearing out the welcome mat wherever he goes.

The anti-hero of the moment is Victor Kelly (Christopher Walken), a hapless car mechanic who has done his best to submerge his jailbird history (which entailed a botched robbery) and be an attentive family man. When a young cousin arrives out of the blue from Ireland (Peter McDonald), debts are closing in on Victor that may force his mother out of a nursing home, as well as lead to the eviction of him and his grown daughter, Miriam, from their modest home in Sunnyside, Queens. Suddenly, a heist that friends have been contemplating seems like the only way out, and the Irish cousin seems oddly eager to nudge Victor back into crime.

It's a hoary noir formula, but it feels fresh here, thanks to an uncommonly potent ensemble of actors who lend deeper resonance to sketchily observed characters. Pop singer Cyndi Lauper, simmering with yearning and frustration as Victor's barmaid girlfriend Sally, has heart and charisma to spare. She's got a great movie face and a tender-tough Gloria Grahame thing going that is perfect for both the milieu and the genre. Vera Farmiga makes us sit up as the protective Miriam, as does Donal Logue ("The Tao of Steve") as the genial shnook who masterminds the theft, and Tom Noonan as the no-nonsense locksmith who schools Victor in the art of cracking safes.

The actors are so engaging and the photography (by Debbie DeVilla) so rich that the robbery, when it happens, almost seems secondary. That it matters as much as it ultimately does owes to Walken, giving his most sympathetic performance to date as a decent, old-school kind of guy whose inability to lean on the women in his life threatens his survival. Walken brings gravity and weight to Victor with a minimum of actorly effects: He takes as much care in camouflaging his craft as his character takes in concealing his woes. He's a pleasure to watch.

Many Thanks to Kathy & Eric of the Shebop mailing list for posting these reviews

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