MOVIE REVIEW

Peter Riegert's coming-of-middle-age comedy has warmth.

By Kevin Thomas, Times Staff Writer

With "King of the Corner," Peter Riegert, an accomplished portrayer of seemingly ordinary men, has created a perfect fit for himself and a raft of other fine actors. Gerald Shapiro wrote with Riegert this warm and wise comedy of middle-age malaise, and Riegert directed it with the same unpretentious incisiveness he brings to his acting. Although the film features several youthful characters, it is likely to resonate best with mature audiences.

Like countless other men in their 40s or early 50s, Riegert's Leo Spivak has achieved mid-level success, in his case at a Manhattan marketing and advertising firm, and his life has fallen into a routine, commuting to his Westchester home, a spacious turn-of-the-last-century residence he shares with his down-to-earth wife Rachel (Isabella Rossellini) and their daughter Elena (Ashley Johnson), a high school junior beginning to date, which causes some concern for her parents.

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Leo, in a word, is a mensch. Every several weeks he flies to Arizona to visit his feisty but frail father Sol (Eli Wallach), now living in a nursing home because his longtime girlfriend Inez (Rita Moreno) can no longer care for him. Sol, who emigrated with his parents from Lithuania at age 12, went to work at 14 and supported Leo and his late wife as a traveling salesman. Sol hated his work, and Leo is less than thrilled at having to test products with focus groups. Sol, however, managed to work out an enjoyable retirement and has retained his hardscrabble grasp of human nature; he cannot get through to Leo that in playing mentor so conscientiously to a young man (Jake Hoffman) could prove his own professional undoing.

What Leo cannot escape is the impact of his father's mortality, and "King of the Corner" reveals how Sol's dwindling life span starts nudging Leo into self-discovery, into a growing awareness of how little he knows of what he wants out of life or how to get it. Leo may be stuck in a groove, but he's really adrift, ill-prepared for change or adversity. Out of town he runs into the girl (a delicious Beverly D'Angelo) he lusted after in high school, an encounter that provides one of the film's most telling sequences.

The trajectory of Leo's late-blooming assertiveness is a bit of a stretch, but no matter, for in its delightfully low-key manner "King of the Corner" has made its point that decent people who live a life without much reflection do so at their peril. The amusing supporting cast includes Harris Yulin and Frank Wood as Leo's unctuous bosses, Dominic Chianese as a smooth undertaker and Eric Bogosian as an eccentric rabbi. One demurrer: cinematographer Mauricio Rubinstein's puzzlingly harsh, uneven lighting does Moreno and Rossellini no favors.

'King of the Corner'

MPAA rating: R for some language and sexual references

Times guidelines: Adult themes, situations

An Elevation Filmworks presentation. Director Peter Riegert. Producer Lemore Syvan. Screenplay by Gerald Shapiro and Riegert. Cinematographer Mauricio Rubinstein. Editor Mario Ontal. Music Al Kooper. Costumes Lynn Falconer. Production designer Benjamin Conable. Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes.

Exclusively at the Westside Pavilion Cinemas, 10800 W. Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223.