Ruby **** (1992, Danny Aiello, Sherilyn Fenn) – Classic Movie Review 12,675

The 1992 thriller film Ruby stars Danny Aiello in a satisfying portrait of small-time hood Jack Ruby, the owner of a tacky Dallas, Texas, burlesque nightclub, who takes on Candy Cane (Sherilyn Fenn) as his new stripper.

Director John Mackenzie’s 1992 thriller film Ruby stars Danny Aiello, who offers a rounded, believable, satisfying portrait of small-time hood Jack Ruby, the owner of a tacky Dallas, Texas, burlesque nightclub, who takes on Candy Cane (Sherilyn Fenn) as his new stripper.

It is set in 1962. After a visit to Cuba, where he rescues the Mob’s man in Havana, Ruby suddenly becomes everyone’s patsy – the FBI, CIA and the Mafia. And soon he’s in even deeper when Candy entertains President Kennedy (Gérard David)  to an all-night show in Las Vegas.

Mackenzie’s film hits the target throughout by keeping everything small-scale and tight, using exactly the opposite approach to that which proved JFK’s undoing. Ruby doesn’t pretend to offer the exact truth but it does offer a real breath of life across an overexposed area. Perhaps this isn’t exactly how it happened but this is certainly how it could have happened.

Aiello is a smashing actor. Every little twitch commands attention. Restraint is the key word. Less is more. Sherilyn Fenn is effortlessly alluring,

It is based on a play by British screenwriter Stephen Davis and you’d never know. Davis writes his own screen play.

Ruby was released on March 27, 1992 three months after Oliver Stone’s JFK, and flopped at the box office.

Jack Ruby of course shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement garage of a Dallas city police station in 1963.

The cast are Danny Aiello as Jack Ruby, Sherilyn Fenn as Sheryl Ann DuJean (Candy Cane), Frank Orsatti as Action Jackson, Jeffrey Nordling as Hank, Veronica Hart [Jane Hamilton] as Telephone Trixie, Maurice Bernard, Arliss Howard as Maxwell, Tobin Bell as David Ferrie, David Duchovny  as J. D. Tippit, Richard C Sarafian as Proby, Joe Viterelli as Joseph Valachi, Joe Cortese as Louie Vitali, Gérard David as JFK (Las Vegas), John Roselius as Detective Smalls, and Willie Garson as Lee Harvey Oswald.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,675

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com