Life is made up of those things we hide from other people, the things we keep secret. And in City Island, which Anchor Bay sent me a copy of to review, there are a whole lot of secrets. We’ll see them right here.

The Rizzo family, living in a distinct section of the Bronx, has a whole lot of secrets.  I’d tell you about them, but there’s only one that’s absolutely necessary.  Family patriarch Vince, a corrections officer at a prison, has a secret passion he can’t tell his family about–he wants to be an actor. And as such, he’s been quietly taking acting lessons while he tells his family that he’s playing poker. But when he discovers another secret–that he’s got a twenty four year old son who just turned up in his jail–he starts up a series of events that’s going to shake the secrets right out of his entire family.

City Island is a lot like your family.  And by “your” family, I mean most everybody’s family, a strange sort of mix of awkward and heartwarming and downright weird.  You’re going to see some really amazing stuff here.  Everyone’s going to grow and change and learn, and though it won’t always be pretty, and it definitely won’t be simple, it will be incredibly easy to relate to it.

Okay, sure, maybe some of the specifics won’t match up, but just about everyone can relate to trying to hold on to a secret in the midst of people who love you.

Now, on the down side, the opening is a bit slow, and filled with its share of awkward parts, but it’s going to pick up really quickly and give you this terrific last twenty minutes in which they bludgeon you with nearly every hidden secret in the movie coming out all at once.  It’s a spectacular experience, and putting it largely in Andy Garcia’s hands is a fantastic move. Not that the rest of the cast isn’t pulling its own weight and then some–no mistake there–but Garcia is easily the highlight.

The end result, of course, is that after a less than satisfactory beginning, we get a thoroughly satisfying experience. Anchor Bay has once again put together prime watching. The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this one an eight out of ten–it may not be perfect, but it’ll do a close enough job of it.  Don’t keep this one a secret; it’s well worth passing on.