City by the Sea is based on a factually researched Esquire magazine article by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (now dead) called Mike McAlary. The piece was called ‘Mark of a Murderer’ (which was at one stage the title under which City by the Sea was due to be released in North America), and explored the way in which circumstances beyond everyone’s control led to allegations of a ‘killer gene’ in the LaMarca family. Thus, in the film, Vincent’s investigation leads him inexorably towards Joey, the son Vincent left behind in Long Beach and hasn’t seen since he was a pre-teen.

Joey is a drug addict with a despairing girlfriend, Gina (played by rising star Eliza Dushku, who also appeared with De Niro in This Boy’s Life), and a son she is reluctant to let him see. It’s not that Joey is evil, she tells Vincent: just chronically unreliable, like all junkies. True, he wants to escape the life in Long Beach which he knows is going to kill him, but Gina is sceptical of his quintessential New York/New Jersey dream of moving south. “Whenever he gets rabbity he’s gonna fly away to Florida,” she tells Vincent. “Like it’s some magic country, when it’s only the fuckin’ dope capital of the world.”

In the end, of course, Vincent’s job as a cop and Joey’s involvement in the death of the pusher bring them together for what could be a final showdown, where the father/son relationship collides with job (Vincent) and lifestyle (Joey). It is the kind of set-up from which great thrillers are made, since it backs up the suspense of the action scenes - and City by the Sea doesn’t short-change its audience on these - with a personal dilemma that cannot be resolved, only transcended. “We just pretend that we got a choice,” remarks Vincent to Michelle. “More like you get a sentence.”

Frances McDormand as Vincent’s girlfriend, Michelle

It was this combination - a great lead role; an intense personal drama like the ones around which Greek tragedies were built; and an action/thriller format climaxing in a shoot-out in the abandoned Casino that used to be Long Beach’s main attraction - that attracted producers Brad Grey and Franchise Pictures’ Elie Samaha to McAlary’s article and led to Ken Hixon’s screenplay.

Vincent LaMarca was clearly going to be a role that would draw actors of the calibre of Al Pacino and De Niro - an Italianamerican background seemed almost essential - both of whom were reportedly interested in the movie. Even knowing this, however, it is hard to imagine anyone other than De Niro in the part: that mixture of brooding silence broken by sudden bursts of verbal and even physical violence which he has brought to such recent movies as Casino, Ronin and even Flawless is the essence of LaMarca.

James Franco as Joey

Shot on location in Long Beach and Manhattan between mid-November 2000 and late February 2001, City by the Sea is directed by Michael Caton-Jones, the UK director who has worked mainly in the United States on such films as The Jackal and This Boy’s Life, but returned to his native Scotland in 1995 to make Rob Roy.