Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story

TV Movie
2003
2h

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

James Woods in Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story (2003)

A New York mayor tries to cut back the city's crime and social problems, all in the face of his own battle with cancer, the tragedy of the September 11th Attacks and his troubled marriage.A New York mayor tries to cut back the city's crime and social problems, all in the face of his own battle with cancer, the tragedy of the September 11th Attacks and his troubled marriage.A New York mayor tries to cut back the city's crime and social problems, all in the face of his own battle with cancer, the tragedy of the September 11th Attacks and his troubled marriage.

Director
- Robert Dornhelm
Writers
- Wayne Barrett
- Stanley Weiser
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

4.5/10

892

YOUR RATING

Director
- Robert Dornhelm
Writers
- Wayne Barrett
- Stanley Weiser
Stars

See production info at IMDbPro

Nominated for 2 Primetime Emmys
- 2 wins & 3 nominations total

Photos7

Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Despite being credited, Stanley Weiser claims that his entire script was thrown out at the request of James Woods and replaced by one written by an uncredited Lionel Chetwynd, a well-known politically conservative screenwriter, to make it more pro-Giuliani.

Goofs
In the scene where Giuliani is telling his wife about going after the crime bosses, as she approaches, he lifts up the cigar in his left hand, but in the next shot, the hand with the cigar is back on the table and never lifts it up.

Quotes
Rudolph 'Rudy' Giuliani: You spend your whole life seeing and hearing about people dying. You just never think it will happen to you.

Connections
Featured in The 55th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (2003)

User reviews20

Review

Featured review

2/10

Gives made-for-TV movies a bad name.

A superficial puff-piece about a fascinating political character that stays so much on the surface that it verges on soft-core propaganda. Neither James Woods nor the script really bears a particularly close resemblance to Guiliani, both making him look better than he really was.

One example that can symbolize many others: Guiliani is shown as a devoted Yankee fan, but there is no mention of his various overt and covert efforts to funnel millions of public dollars to George Steinbrenner and his baseball team.

The director's and writer's point of view is not only essentially pro-Guiliani, but the narrative framework is also centered within his political cadre, rather than being informed by the insights of detached and balanced observers.

I would have liked to have seen more about where Rudy came from -- geographically, socially, and psychologically -- to help understand how he became such a capable yet massively flawed figure on the New York political stage. This movie trivializes its subject matter, focussing on a two-dimensional cutout rather than a three-dimensional character within a complex context.