Chivalry in Central Park

I'm not Rappaport is the saga of a park bench octagenarian who lives true to his ideals, most of which have something to do with fighting entrenched injustices with predictable results. Unlike Don Quixote, Nat Moyer (Walter Mathau) derived his enthusiasms not from books but from distant yet vivid boyboyhood memories of Lower East Side worker meetings in the nascent heyday of the American labor movement.

Moyer's armour is a cantankerous blend of Jewish vaudeville, chutzpah, false impersonation and inflammed rhetoric, all of which he uses to sally against overcharging supermarkets, co-op associations, Puerto Rican muggers and a cowboy loan shark. His side-kick is a disbelieving, distrusting, down to earth Black boilerman, Midge Carter (Ossie Davis) who wants nothing but peace in old age, but who can't resist Moyer's stories and enticements.

Like his Estremaduran counterpart, Moyer's idealism is both heroic and harmful, fighting for people and callously using them at the same time. It also lands both him and Carter into some bruising righting of wrongs.

The movie is set almost entirely on a bench in Central Park and the play is carried along on the strength of Davis and Mathau's superb character performances which make one forget that the action has barely moved from a single spot.

When his concerned daughter seeks to check him into a senior residence home, will Moyers finally admit what he really is or will Carter entice him into ongoing flights of idealism and fantasy?

As the movie comes to a close, the camera slowly pans away from the park bench, revealing at first a cluster of autumn trees, then the growing expanse of the Park and finally the surrounding stone bastions of power, privilege and capitalism set against a swelling chorus of the Internationale

.