Review: Sam’s Song

Directed by: Jordan Leondopoulos

Written by: John C. Broderick

Starring: Robert De Niro, Jarred Mickey, Jennifer Warren, Martin J. Kelley, Anthony Charnota

Rating: [1/5]

Not every film can be a winner, especially when it lacks all of the basics of what makes a particularly captivating story. This includes elements like the acting, screenplay, score, and many other elements coming together for any movie to come out even the slightest bit coherent. Evidently, something Sam’s Song does not present in any way making for quite the uninteresting viewing experience. 

Spending a weekend in Long Island with a wealthy bunch, Sam Nicoletti (Robert De Niro) gets the opportunity to learn how they all interact. With plenty of questionable actions witnessed he begins to see a distinct level of shallowness amongst these individuals. 

Devoid of any real plot and trying to operate as mostly vibes, Sam’s Song exists as solely a head-scratching experience in trying to comprehend what in the world the individuals behind this feature thought they were making in putting this all together. It certainly brought everything together to make for a feature film, even having enough film to fill an 89-minute runtime. However, whatever occurs within here only seeks to confuse with there not really being a coherent plot to follow. 

The framework of Sam spending time with these obscenely rich people establishes something interesting to work off of but it never entirely goes anywhere remotely intriguing or captivating. We do get a moment where Sam runs through a field pretending to shoot and take the hits on the other side, which seemingly just comes out of nowhere and does not really contribute anything to the story. This honestly can be said about the majority of the plot as well if we’re being fair but it certainly does not make for something captivating to watch. 

Actions done by these rich individuals certainly seek to shock in the ways they interact with each other outside of the confines of having to do these actions with other individuals of a lower class. Something that piques the interest of Sam with his work as a filmmaker predicated on filming individuals certainly presents something interesting for him to follow only further accentuated by the relations he develops with some of the women at this party. Through them, he attempts to learn more about these individuals as well as them on an individual level. 

Finding this feature solely for the reasons of watching all of Robert De Niro’s films for some masochistic reason, he certainly tries to do something within this role. Very early on in his career, he makes Sam a somewhat watchable character as he gains intrigue in what these individuals do, which certainly serves as a credit to him and what he managed to accomplish at such a young age. What he manages to do here helps this feature avoid the lowest rating I have seeing as not much else can be positively written about in this feature. As well as De Niro acted in trying to salvage this feature, the rest of the cast did not deliver in the same way. 

Witnessing the acting by the other actors became quite a grating experience on the eyes and ears as these individuals tried to take the putrid dialogue they received and attempted to make sense of it and deliver it as human beings. It certainly did not deliver a good experience but you can only fault them so much when what they receive does them absolutely no favors. You almost have to respect De Niro more for having the capability to act opposite some of these actors and still deliver his lines with some sort of integrity. Entirely disappointing but when the rest of the production matches what the actors do here they should not receive too much more criticism. 

Standing as a reason to stop trying to watch the entire filmography of my favorite actors, Sam’s Song demonstrates, at least in the beginning, these actors simply needed to get jobs and make things work making them take on projects far beneath their talent. Pretty much every actor has this within this history except for perhaps John Cazale, who essentially had a perfect filmography as an actor. This feature exists as one of those films that have more notoriety if one can even use that word, for being re-cut into another film after De Niro blew up and gained fame for acting in much better movies. At the very least this feature shows some of the glimpses of what would make him so great later on.