Gloria

If somebody had to play the Gena Rowlands role in this needless remake of a 1980 John Cassavetes film, Stone's the dame. As a gangster's ex-girlfriend stuck protecting a boy the Mob wants to whack, she's tough, tart, and, behind the brassy facade, a real softy. But the way director Sidney Lumet has reworked the script, Gloria winds up so maternal it gets mawkish. Cassavetes' story was about the growing bond between a streetwise broad and a feisty tyke. Yet where Rowlands made a great show of keeping up her hardboiled appearances, Stone tries to jerk our tears with too many of her own. C