In Donnie Brasco, Al Pacino plays a mobster who never gets a break, though he still tries to act like an important part of the gang. Through talented acting and smooth direction, Pacino’s character wins us over, even when he’s doing things we don’t agree with. Dennis Hopper takes a similar role in The Last Days of Frankie the Fly, a movie with brilliant characters and an unsteady plot.

Frankie (Dennis Hopper) sees himself as an important part of the Los Angeles mob scene, but in truth, he stands on the mob’s bottom rung. His boss Sal, sadistically played by Michael Madsen, treats Frankie like a servant, giving him minor, non-violent jobs.

While Vic (played by screenwriter Dayton Callie), Sal’s right-hand man, is throwing men through windows or shooting people in side alleys, Frankie runs menial errands. He spends most of his time keeping an eye on Joey (Kiefer Sutherland), who mourns the uselessness of his film degree while making porno movies to repay an old gambling debt.

Dennis Hopper is perfect as Frankie the Fly, a spineless guy who would give anything for a little self-respect (which begins with losing the nickname). Hopper plays a dim-witted loser, but manages to make the character likable enough for us to sympathize with him.

“Why do you call him ‘Fly’?” Sal’s bimbo asks.

“Tell her, Vic,” Sal answers with a disinterested flick of the wrist.

The answer: “ ’Cause flies eat shit.”

Frankie needs a complete makeover, but he’ll have to work behind the backs of Sal and Vic if he wants to earn a new reputation. When Joey asks Frankie for a favor (gambling some money he made on the side to help pay back the debt), Frankie sees his chance: he wants to direct his own movie. Too desperate to tell Frankie what a stupid idea it is, Joey plays along.

Frankie wants to be important in someone’s life, so he becomes a toned down version of Robert De Niro’s Taxi Driver. He tries to rescue Margaret (Daryl Hannah), Joey’s main porno actress, from her life of drugs and prostitution and transform her into the legitimate movie star she always wanted to be. The scenes between Frankie and Margaret are tender, while managing to avoid the unnatural glamour of Pretty Woman. We can see that although Frankie is sexually attracted to Margaret, he respects her too much to give in to his desire.

To a degree, Margaret resembles the prostitute played by Mira Sorvino in Mighty Aphrodite; she is open about her sexuality and doesn’t mind her work. She dreams of real acting, but it seems like she wants to go straight simply because it is the ‘right’ thing to do. Hannah pours herself into the role, which helps us get past her occupation, but also makes her acceptance of the degrading scenes more horrific.

In the meantime, Frankie and Joey both have their heads in the clouds and make stupid mistakes about covering their tracks (Vic finds Frankie writing the script in a diner, where Frankie tries to explain the trouble of getting an idea without giving away why he needs one). It doesn’t take long before Sal--who claims to “hear everything. I’ve got what I call 20/20 hearing”--finds out what they are doing. To teach the two a lesson, Sal ties Joey up to a huge wheel, part of his porno set, and stabs one of Joey’s eyes in front of Frankie. The camera work in the scene puts the audience in Joey’s place by spinning in circles and switching between shots of following the knife into Joey’s eye and watching it approach from Joey’s point-of-view.

The punishment is the last straw for Frankie, who decides to get his revenge on Sal by videotaping his execution. Of course, Frankie’s usual absurd ideas won’t be enough to outsmart a mob boss, but his ignorance never stopped him in the past.

“The day I gotta worry about Frankie the Fly is the day I should be dead,” Sal laughs.

I saw The Last Days of Frankie the Fly at WorldFest Houston, where the film’s director, Peter Markle, won Best First Feature for his debut film, The Personals. Although Frankie the Fly did not win an award at WorldFest, the film succeeds in creating a remarkable selection of down-and-out characters. Each is the center of his own universe, though none seems to matter to the world around him. Hopper especially seems to enjoy the role. When Frankie finally makes his movie, he adopts what he imagines to be artistic vision. He makes such a grandiose scene of smoking a cigar that he calls unwanted attention to himself. Watching a talented actor like Hopper pretending to be a terrible actor pays off in the movie’s climactic scene.

The Last Days of Frankie the Fly jerks the audience around several times at the very end. The last-minute plot twists seem like a desperate attempt to please the audience. The movie’s conclusion tries to resolve too many problems to be either believable or satisfying. Unfortunately, the neat ending does not overcome or justify the upsetting sex and violence that lingers from earlier in the film. With the potential to be so much more, Frankie the Fly will probably be remembered as just another mobster movie.