Handsome Vincent Spano begins and closes a large circle of characters whose interactions in John Sayless densely-plotted take on American society resemble a contemporary urban La Ronde. Mick (Spano) works for his father, whose brother is right-hand man to the mayor, and so on. Up and down the socio-economic ladder in Sayless fictitious Eastern seaboard burg, racial and ethnic tensions, political corruption, rivalries and greed spark off each other until there is literally a conflagration. Like a set of stacked dominoes, every character has a knock-on effect in the chain of events until we gradually make the personal connections that link everyone in town from the mayor to the family of a Hispanic maid and a crazy homeless guy. As their stories intertwine, occasionally somewhat torturously, its hard to grab onto any particular point of view. The aimless, unhappy Mick and earnest black politician Wynn (Horton) emerge as the principals whose fates you become most interested in, but it is the smaller characters who provide some of the most memorable incidents: a pair of rock gonzoid thieves, two angry mothers abusing a pair of cops, Mad Anthony (Josh Montel), a discount appliance salesman who makes absurd TV commercials.
For quite a while there is much humour in all of this, indeed, some of the connections alone are so coincidental as to provoke laughs, but eventually Sayles builds a sense of heavy dread. Vignettes speed up: one man jogs while another raves in jail. A man enjoys a woman, unaware that he is stalked by her jealous ex-husband. Round and round and faster it goes.
