You might think this is a James Cagney picture. But it totally isn't. The old man has maybe 10 minutes of screentime, and doesn't show up until almost the two-hour mark. Anyway...

The first hour of Ragtime is riveting, delicious stuff. The superb cast and great production values shine. I haven't read Doctorow's novel, but this section, where Forman leaps from story to story weaving an exhausting tapestry of turn-of-the-century melodrama, seems most in line with the book. It's almost as though nobody can decide which story they'd like to tell. Which is more than okay.

Unfortunately, and I have to disagree with Roger Ebert on this point, Forman and company decide at about the half-way point that their story is going to be about the racial tensions that explode after Coalhouse Walker, Jr, piano player, gets humiliated by some douchebag white firefighters. And it's a huge mistake. At this point, the multitude of characters we met early on all but disappear and we get a pretty standard story of racial intolerance. A real shame.

It's still probably worth a look, as there's a lot to like, but it's ultimately a missed opportunity.

^^^

What he said.

The film is lively and musical and fun for the first half of the movie. Evelyn Nesbit, Tateh, the brother-in-law, all of it works. Then it feels like it's trying too hard to be something important (as in Oscar bait) and it becomes dull. Howard Rollins does give a very good performance as Coalhouse Walker, but in spite of his performance we're not given a hell of a lot here to chew on. And worst of all we know where it's going to end up.

On the DVD documentary there was apparently talk early on when this film was being made that Robert Altman was in talks to make the film. This would've been perfect for him. In order for it to have fully worked (based on what I know of the book), it needed to be at least 45 minutes longer with an additional subplot and also cut Walker's story down quite a bit. Altman would've been perfect for handling this. Instead we're left with a decent film with very good performances, but ends up cutting itself short with a dull second half.

**