CINEMA: IT'S GOOD TO BE THE MAYOR!

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THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW York, John Pappas (Al Pacino), is a very hugging guy. He comes on with that mixture of bravado, urgency and imposed intimacy that passes for charm in urban politicians. "Noo Yawk Ciddy--this is the place!" he rasps with the naked brio of someone who owns the joint. It's good to be the mayor. And, for Pappas, it's necessary to connect with voters in a physical, almost sexual way. A handshake and a brisk "How'm I doin'?", a la former Mayor Ed Koch, is not enough. Pappas has to bear-hug you, squeezing all the love and loyalty from your body into his. He's a vampire whose lifeblood is the unconditional emotional endorsement of everyone in the city.

Pappas is the tornado at the center of City Hall, a cluttered drama that imagines a Faustian battle between Pappas and his deputy mayor Kevin Calhoun (John Cusack). Kevin is a Louisiana boy who wants to hold onto his ideals even as he grabs for the brass ring. That won't be easy. A black child has been gunned down by a Mafioso, and the political fallout may contaminate a Brooklyn boss (Danny Aiello), a stately judge (Martin Landau), possibly even the mayor.

Because the story was written by Ken Lipper, a deputy mayor in the Koch administration, and snazzed up by a trio of old-pro screenwriters--Nicholas Pileggi, Paul Schrader, Bo Goldman--and because it was shot in Gotham's city hall with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's blessing, the movie has a burly verisimilitude. It drops the right names, purrs with silky threats. The ancient code of Mediterranean machismo operates here. You make deals partly to get things done and partly to make deals. It's what men do.

After a few reels, though, things get goofy. Suddenly every room is preposterously dark; the most powerful men in town can't afford decent light bulbs. Pacino's performance turns crazily manic: when he gives an oration for the dead child, his wild hand gestures read like sign language for the myopic. And director Harold Becker should know that no movie is allowed to use You'll Never Walk Alone unless the intent is comic.

But that Rodgers and Hammerstein anthem, an inadvertent camp classic, fits the nostalgic mood of City Hall. The film harks back a decade or two to the days when New York pols with great names--Meade Esposito, Stanley Steingut--swaggered toward a dread destiny. The bad guys in City Hall are in that mold: princes of darkness, Borgias of Brooklyn. The movie's obvious forebear is The Godfather, which apotheosized the dirty dealings of statesmen and Mafiosi in the richly upholstered, 10-watt throne room of Hades.

That was then--maybe. Now Giuliani gets in trouble not by bending but by being too prickly and righteous; anyway, this former crusading D.A. would be the last politician on earth to take a goodfella as a bedfellow. But movies are still in love with the romance of corruption. They need to believe the gaudy worst about government: that Inside is the dirtiest, most divine place to be.

--By Richard Corliss