The Search for One-eye Jimmy

Those who enjoy guerrila filmmaking, the kind of garage films that look like they were shot on a shoestring budget . . . because they were . . . may find something of worth in "The Search for One-Eye Jimmy." But others should beware.

There's only so much good will you can work up for a movie as rag-tag as this one. It plays more like outtakes from a better movie on the same subject. A little more polish, a little more rehearsal - and a better ending - and first-time filmmaker Henry Kass might have had something.

As it is, this a pretty weak comedy about life in a rundown South Brooklyn neighborhood, peppered with the usual eccentric characters, and enough crass and juvenile humor to make you wonder if it was sent to a junior high school class for rewrites.

The focus is primarily on Les (Holt McCallany), a student filmmaker who is shooting a documentary about "the old neighborhood" when he stumbles onto a mystery. It seems a local boy, by the name of "One-Eye" Jimmy has dis-ap-peared.

His mother (Anne Meara) is distraught, which prompts another son, Ed (Steve Buscemi), to make a halfhearted effort to find his brother. As Les begins filming these encounters, he becomes convinced he's got a terrific mystery-documentary in the making. Now if only Jimmy winds up dead . . . not that he's wishing for anything like that, you understand.

So, with some old neighborhood pals - Joe Head, so-called because he has an oversize noggin (Michael Baldalucco); car thief and con man Junior Junior (Nick Turturro); and Lefty (Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini), a young hood whose car Junior keeps stealing - Les investigates the disappearance and follows Ed around.

Along the way they encounter Col. Ron, a crazed Vietnam veteran (Samuel L. Jackson), who fishes for garbage in a local canal; wacky Disco Bean (John Turturro in an afro wig), a goofball who is still living in the '70s, and who spends much of his time practicing outdated dance-floor moves in a local warehouse; Ellen, a standoffish artist who teaches at Ryker's Island; the Snake (Tony Sirico), a mobster who used to be called "The Whale" until he dropped 200 pounds; and Madame Esther (Aida Turturro), a fortuneteller who tries to help locate Jimmy.

There are a couple of chuckles here and there, but for the most part this is pretty lame - more like a bunch of guys who got a camera and had some fun together than a real film. The resolution to the mystery is pretty dumb, and the final sequence - a take-off of "The Player" - is even worse.

Of the cameo guest stars, Jackson fares best. He's very funny doing comic cross-talk routines with McCallany, Baldalucco and Nick Turturro - and his wacky mini-monologues sound like ad-libs. Whether or not that is the case, it is during his brief moments on-screen that the movie hints at what it might have been.

"The Search for One-Eye Jimmy" is rated R for wall-to-wall foul language, as well as a couple of scenes with violence.