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AT THE MOVIES Films Both Current and Historic: The Troubled World of Local Journalism and the Tale of a Mob Math Wiz by Mike Canning
Storm Lake
grassroots (maybe corn-fed) politics, but utterly lackCullen’s attitude and work ethic. It might be very ing the nasty tenor of our recent national political nice to wake up in Storm Lake with your morning Here’s a paean to journalism, old style. It’s also a scrimmage. The film’s chronicle ends with a (soft) coffee and read the Times twice a week. near obituary for shoe leather journalism as it was bang, as COVID-19 slowly works its way into Iowa— practiced, especially in America’s small towns. It especially at the Tyson plant--and leaves us with the is also a chronicle of a close-knit family, the CulLansky vision of an empty newsroom. Still, the staff of the lens, who don’t want their decades-long work to die The Hollywood mob story has a long and illusTimes looks to resuscitate itself and keep the real, along with America’s small newspapers. Told in the trious (and seedy) history, from “Little Caesar” to local news coming. no-nonsense tones of the laconic Midwest, “Storm “The Irishman,” with scads of crude B-pictures in Lake” mixes a bit of Lake Woebegone between. “Lansky” is just the latest, with “All the President’s Men” (the but with a figure less known to the film runs 85 minutes and is not ratpublic. Not exactly a masterpiece, it ed—though it contains nothing obdutifully fills in the blanks about one jectionable). of America’s lesser-known, if imporThe Storm Lake Times has been tant, criminal minds (the film is rated a paragon of news coverage in north“R,” runs 119 minutes, and opened west Iowa for over 30 years. The biJune 25th). weekly paper, in a town of 15,000 David Stone (Sam Worthingsouls, is the most important one in ton), a divorcee and down-on-hisrural Buena Vista county. The area luck novelist, gets the opportunity of has been a super-red state for years, a lifetime with a surprise call from inthough the editor, Art Cullen, is one famous mob accountant Meyer Lanof the town’s leading liberal voices. It sky (Harvey Keitel), offering Stone a is also the home of a couple of Amerchance “to tell you my life story” toica’s agricultural corporate giants, ward possibly publishing a biograincluding Tyson Foods, one of the phy. It’s 1981, and Lansky has long Art Cullen shown presiding over an Iowa presidential debate in the film “Storm Lake.” Photo courtesy of Whole Hog Films state’s most important immigrant embeen living in Miami, where the inployers and source of local diversity. terviews take place. Art Cullen, with a mop of white fly-away hair Art works with a bevy of other Cullens, includFor decades, law enforcement authorities have that recalls the mature Mark Twain, is the unbiding brother John, the publisher who founded the been trying to locate an alleged $300 million fortune den star of “Storm Lake,” (ably directed by Jerry Ripaper; Delores, Art’s wife and a reporter and phothe mobster spirited away before he quit the crime sius and Beth Levison) the steady, reasonable voice tographer; and Tom, the paper’s lead reporter and life, and the FBI sees the Lansky interviews as their for an enterprise in crisis. He is also the voice of the Art’s son. They are devoted to their work (Art won last chance to capture the aging boss of Murder Inc. Times, whose editorials, well-argued and good-hua 2017 Pulitzer Prize for political reporting) but are and his stash before he dies. mored, won him the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and capconcerned with their future as their once-ample ad The film’s screenplay (by director Eytan Rocktured the native wisdom of Iowa. You see him as a revenue has plummeted in the last decade, and they away) toggles between the Miami scenes and the good guy to have a coffee with. struggle to get out of the red. life story of the poor but brilliant Jewish kid, MeyMost of the other Cullens also get their innings, Shot beginning in March 2019, “Storm Lake” er (John Magaro) who teams up with the tough but wife Delores and son Tom stand out. Delores, also offers a timely capsule of the beginning of the mug Bugsy Siegel (David Cade), the two eventualworking as both beat reporter and staff photographer, 2020 presidential campaign. The last third of the ly forming the brain and brawn of an ever-growing proves to be a level-headed and good humored scribe, film shows the idiosyncratic Iowa caucuses, exhibcriminal enterprise based on casino gambling and while Tom does steady work on local stories while iting the nitty-gritty of the campaign as it tumbles to extortion. Overall, the flash-back story contains representing new ideas to help the paper survive. its February conclusion, a unique collection of minimore energy and snap (some of it ending in bruIn its soft-sell and amiable way, you admire the polls to determine delegates for each party. This is tal gun killings) than the more pedestrian interview 80 H HILLRAG.COM
