A New Jersey city in which all loyalties are mixed up -- ethnic, racial, personal, family. Some people turn one way or another reflexively. Others feel as if each limb has been tied to a different horse and their slowly being pulled apart.

Vincent Spano gets the main credit here but it really belongs to John Sayles who wrote and directed this tale of a near hopeless urban condition. Some guys are obviously "bad" -- the phony Italian mayor. But most of the people we see are just trying to please the people they owe something to, while making a buck on the side if it's possible. Even the cops are given more than one dimension.

I don't want to get snobbish but the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote a lot about moral acts. He divided them into two kinds. "Hypothetical imperatives" were acts that came from thinking, "What's in it for me?" And "categorical imperatives" led to different acts that came from thinking, "What if everybody did this?"

Only one character is impelled by categorical imperatives -- Joe Morton as the Councilman representing the black and Hispanic district -- and in the end, it seems he may have been won over to the other side. It's hard to tell.

The ending of the film is ambiguous. Periodically the viewer has seen David Strathairn as a raving lunatic who goes around shouting things like, "Help!" and "Prices have never been lower!" Everyone pays him civil inattention. He's seen in jail, on the streets, and in crowds. And here, at the end, Vincent Spano is hiding atop a building crane with a bullet in him. His father, Tony Lo Bianco, tries to comfort him and then cries out "Help -- somebody help!" The camera shows us the street far below, lighted with those garish yellow city lamps. It's entirely empty except for a lone figure. It's Strathairn, who waves his arms back at Lo Bianco, shakes a hurricane fence, and begins to shout, "Help!" The likelihood of an improved situation is small.

You have to hand it to John Sayles. It took a lot of courage to make this movie, and some of his others. They're filled with corruption and sometimes murder but they're not simple minded. The figures at the top of the hierarchy are sometimes the main cause of urban rot -- as in this case -- but they're not exactly evil. Like everybody else, they're move in a direction towards reward and away from punishment -- only their rewards are greater and their punishments less. At least in this movie. Historically every man who served as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, between 1962 and 2006 was indicted for corruption.

It's really an ensemble movie and there are multiple intertwined plots so it's hard to outline them. Overall, it's a picture of life among the working class and the poor. The film doesn't leave anyone with an easy way out.

As I say, a courageous movie.

Director John Sayles brings something rare to American films: a keen sense of purpose. The result is gutsy, knockdown entertainment. Building contractors, politicians, crime bosses and racist cops all contribute to this kaleidoscopic analysis of a New Jersey city riddled with corruption.

City Of Hope is a masterly deconstruction of the power plays, vested interests and spheres of influence that run, and often ruin American cities. Unrivalled in its sheer scope and ambition until the TV series The Wire (2002),which it almost certainly influenced. This is Sayles' most satisfactory film.

I've seen several John Sayles films and have been more or less impressed with all of them. This finely wrought and under appreciated little treasure though is probably his most complex and evocative. It's a formidable task tying together the loose ends of lives Sayles starts with into a coherent drama. All this done in the milieu of a corrupt city, tangled relationships and madness. Even the humour is bleak. There's nothing here that employs maudlin sentiment or melodrama, though. Somehow the tragedy is alleviated by a pervasive and dramatically ironic atmosphere of hope. It's in the pours and veins of this movie.. there's a human quality to it that's difficult to pin down but once detected transforms it into something special.