City by the Sea

City by the Sea (2002) is an American crime drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Michael Caton-Jones and starring Robert De Niro alongside Frances McDormand. Detective Vincent LaMarca has spent his career putting distance between himself and a piece of family history: his father was executed for murder.

Then a drug-related killing lands on his desk. The suspect trail leads him to his own son Joey — James Franco — a young man strung out and cornered, not evil so much as abandoned too early. LaMarca has to decide what his badge means when the person on the other side of the case is someone he failed long before either of them knew how to talk about it.

The script draws from a magazine account of the real Vincent LaMarca's story. De Niro plays it in restraint — not with speeches, but with the particular silence of a man who has rehearsed the apology and still can't say it. McDormand, as his girlfriend, gives him the only scenes where he looks human. Stream City by the Sea (2002) online on iFILM.