Review of Gloria, directed by John Cassavetes

These days, one of my favorite things to do when I don’t know what to watch is to play my version of Russian roulette. What this entails is that I pick a streaming service, close my eyes, press a bunch of arrow keys, and when I open my eyes, I stop pressing the keys. Whatever movie it lands on is the one I’m going to watch that day.

It helps that I’m vaguely adventurous when it comes to the kind of content I watch, as a normal person definitely would not be willing to watch anything and everything that exists on the planet. It also gets me outside of my comfort zone. Anyways, I’m telling this story in the intro because it’s how I ended up watching Gloria.

I had never heard of this movie before, but it seemed interesting enough. There are some movies I can’t even force myself to watch once I get started because they’re so bad, but I ended up getting through this one pretty easily.

I’m rambling. Let’s get into the review.

A woman finds herself taking care of a neighbor’s son after the mafia comes after the family.

Set in New York City, Gloria begins with a woman, Jeri, coming home to her family with groceries in the Bronx. She’s absolutely ready to cook dinner, but when she enters her apartment building, she notices some strange characters hanging around in the lobby. In the moment, she kind of just brushes it off and heads upstairs, but when she arrives, her husband starts acting weirdly.

As it turns out, he was an accountant for the mob, and they just found out that he was two timing them for the FBI. There’s now a hit on her husband, Jack, and his family because of his actions.

Jeri begins preparing dinner, but then the doorbell rings. Jack freaks out, but it’s just their neighbor Gloria in search of some coffee. Jeri has become increasingly agitated at the situation once she finds out, and she tells Gloria what is happening.

She asks Gloria to protect the kids, and despite not liking children, Gloria agrees to it. However, their daughter refuses to leave the apartment and ends up locking herself in the bathroom, and Gloria only ends up taking their son Phil and one of Jack’s ledgers back to her apartment.

Right after that, the mobsters break into the apartment, killing Jack, Jeri, and their daughter in the process. Gloria grabs Phil and tells them they need to leave, and the news reporters gathering outside take footage of Gloria leaving with him.

They head into Manhattan, where she camps out in an apartment belonging to a friends. Gloria watches the news while Phil goes and takes a nap, and she realizes they’re reporting her as a kidnapper of Phil. In the meantime, the gangsters figure out where they are, and they want the ledger she took.

She realizes they’re old friends, as she a former girlfriend of a mob boss, and she flees with Phil and the ledger, sealing her fate along with Phil’s.

Gloria empties out her bank account, then they head into Queens to stay in a cheap motel room. At a restaurant, they find more gangsters, and she tries to make a deal with them involving the ledger. It fails in the moment, and Gloria tries to tell Phil she needs to send him away. He refutes this, and she decides to leave him behind. She has a change of heart in the moment, but he’s been kidnapped.

So she sets off to rescue him, killing one of the mobsters, leaving the guy’s kid without a dad in front of him. The two escape, and head into another hotel room. Gloria reveals to Phil who exactly she dated in the past (turns out it’s the same guy they’ve been trying to avoid), and she sends him on a mission to meet her in Pittsburgh. She gives up the ledger and guns down a mobster while fleeing, heading to Pennsylvania

The movie ends with the two of them meeting in a cemetery, with the implication they can now live their lives more freely in the background.

Overall Thoughts

Overall, I thought this was a pretty straightforward movie when it comes to plot and characterization.

We stan a female character with a gun willing to take control of the situation—she was the heart and soul of the movie, and it was fitting that the title comes from her name. Without her, this movie would have fallen apart.

That said, I don’t think I have much really to say in terms of analysis for this movie because of how straightforward it was.

It was interesting though seeing New York City in the eighties, especially considering flophouses, or the cheap motel room that they stay in while hiding out in Queens, don’t really exist like that anymore.

Give this one a chance if you haven’t already!

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