Dinner Rush (DVD)

Dinner Rush (DVD) ... course of a highly eventful evening, Dinner Rush is a magnificent piece of ensemble playing--wholly satisfying from soup to nuts. Danny Aiello stars as Louis, a bookmaker who also owns the restaurant but is dismayed that, under the aegis of his son and autocratic master chef Udo (Edoardo Ballerini) the kitchen serves up trendy nouvelle cuisine in place of the simple, hearty fare of its former "Mom and Pop" days. But that's just one of his worries. Harassed waitresses, pretentious diners, Sandra Bernhard's loud and abrasive restaurant critic all add to the stressed, overheated atmosphere. Then there's sous-chef Duncan, Louis's younger son, thousands of dollars in debt to bookies, who's got mixed up with a couple of hoods from Queens, determined to muscle in on Louis's restaurant business and have already shot dead his partner by way of an opening salvo in the negotiations. They're among tonight's diners. And yet, much as ex-music video director Bob Giraldi beautifully orchestrates and intertwines this diverse and clashing set of stories and characters, so Louis exudes a certain quiet serenity that suggests that, despite the grease fires, tantrums, crises and strong-arming, everything¹s somehow going to turn out just fine. A minor but masterly piece of movie-making. On the DVD: Dinner Rush contains a good number of extras. These included a (somewhat disjointed) interview with director Bob Giraldi, himself owner of ten restaurants in New York, a "making of" feature which includes the usual mutual back-slapping between cast and production team (though in this case deserved) and, most appealingly, recipes for some of the tremblingly delicious culinary dishes served up in the film. --David Stubbs