<p> The great Dennis Farina plays Joe May as a dandy down to the last well-trimmed hair of his mustache, not to mention the leather coat and zipper boats of the '70s hustler he once was. But we meet him as an old man in <em>The Last Rites of Joe May,</em> just released from Cook County Hospital after a nine-week stay (they still keep anyone in hospital that long?). He remains a snappy dude with a spring in his step, slowed to a heavy tread when ascending the stairs to his walk-up apartment. </p> <p>And then Joe's in for a shock. A woman named Jenny is living in the place he called home for decades. His landlord, writing him off for dead, rented the flat and tossed most of his belongings into the dumpster. A small time operator all his life, Joe also discovers that the new boss, son of the old kingpin, barely gives him the time of day. His longtime partner in crime has gone straight by checking into assisted living. His '89 Cutlas was towed and auctioned by the city. And then things get really complicated. </p> <p>Careful scrutiny of the screenplay by writer-director Joe Maggio raises a few questions: Does Illinois law really permit a landlord to evict a tenant and dispose of his possessions after only a nine-week absence? But even if the script is wrong on a couple points, <em>The Last Rites of Joe May</em> is powerful enough to override small flaws. Farina plays the morally doubtful protagonist as an old school criminal bound to a code and rules of doing business that have fallen away when he wasn't looking. Despite a selfish life that left no time for his family, he finds beauty in his classical LPsvinyl of course (all movie hipsters and good cats spin the black circle nowadays). Farina's performance is deeply, painfully felt. But while being relentlessly ground down by a society he no longer understands, he is drawn into the company of Jenny and her eight-year old, Angelina, who are terrorized by her sadistic Chicago police detective boyfriend. Well, one thing about Joe: he never liked cops. </p> <p><em>The Last Rites of Joe May</em> is the sort of gritty, realistic, essentially humane urban story that the great directors of the 1970s once made but Hollywood has forgotten in favor of not-so-thrilling, cliché-bedraggled crime thrillers. It's one of the best films most of us never saw last year and it's out on DVD. </p>
