Great Kills

Great Kills reflects the big-time aspirations of small-timers in Staten Island, who would pierce the toni antiques market with salvage from a decommissioned hospital there. An aging workman named Mr. G (Joe Pantoliano) has spent his lifetime helping to maintain a psychiatric hospital in Staten Island. Now, after a ten-year controversy over neglect of patients at the institution, it is finally shutting down. Its furniture — “the kind of stuff you find in a doctor’s office” — is lying abandoned in a nearby field. The prospect of selling the stuff for a quick score proves irresistible to his ne’er-do-well son, Tim (Bob Homeyer), who’s living at home after losing his position as an adjunct professor of literature. To finance the plan, Tim recruits his estranged childhood friend, restaurateur, Robert (Peter Welch). What ensues is a drunken evening of scheming and betrayal in which the plan becomes less real, the men’s desperate realities become more apparent and a secret is revealed.