Down by Law

Jim Jarmusch’s deadpan comedy starts with a long sequence of tracking shots of just the New Orleans neighborhoods that Katrina probably washed away, before focusing in on Tom Waits as a much-fired deejay being thrown out by girlfriend Ellen Barkan, and small-time pimp John Lurie ignoring a lecture from his naked but philosophically acute Black whore. They wind up railroaded into the same Orleans Parish jail cell, into which comes the irrepressible Roberto Benigni (back in the day when he was still sufferable, and a nice contrast to Jarmusch’s seeming lassitude), who utters the movie’s tagline: “Ees a sad and beautiful world.” Roberto (big fan of Walt Whitman and “Bob” Frost in Italian translation) foments a prison break, and they wind up slogging through the bayou, bickering and bonding, to a fanciful but apt ending. The laughs sneak up on you, and while the film is much too hip to wear its heart on its sleeve, it definitely beats within. (1986, dvd, n.) *7+*