Things Change (1988)

Just as The Shawl stands out as a more quietly reflective piece than the other major plays of the 1980s, so Mamet’s second film was a much simpler and more conventional affair than its predecessor, House of Games, or his third film, Homicide. In Things Change a gang of well-connected Chicago mobsters make an offer to an elderly and impoverished shoeshine man, Gino (Don Ameche): if he will take the rap for a murder one of the gang has committed, he will be financially rewarded on his release from jail. When he accepts, ‘Mr Green’ (Mike Nussbaum), the local Mafia boss, hands him a Sicilian coin as a symbol of their shared heritage, and he is entrusted for the three days preceding the trial to a minder, Jerry (Joe Mantegna), who is ‘on probation’ for poor performance. Jerry decides Gino deserves a more immediate reward, and he takes him to Lake Tahoe in Nevada, where he passes him off as ‘Mr Johnson’, supposedly a mobster VIP travelling incognito. The subterfuge threatens to unravel when Don Joseph Vincent (Robert Prosky) invites the mysterious Mr Johnson to his estate, where he is hosting a meeting of Godfathers. Gino convinces Don Vincent that he is genuine by showing him Green’s Sicilian coin, and Don Vincent reciprocates by giving him a quarter that he can use to telephone should he ever need help. On returning to Chicago Jerry, who has tried and failed to persuade Gino to escape altogether, discovers that his real task is to kill him. Instead he assaults Frankie (J. J. Johnston), the mobster who has given him the order; Gino saves the day by calling Don Vincent, and the final shots reveal that it is now Frankie and not Gino who is to be the fall guy in court, while Jerry joins Gino at work in the shoeshine store.