Mobsters
Clearly a project that was hoping to combine elements of Goodfellas and Young Guns to create its own potent box office concoction, this film instead in the hands of an incompetent TV commercial director (who the fuck was Michael Karbelbnikoff??) and hampered by an absolute mess of a screenplay winds up crashing and burning upon takeoff. Christian Slater (red-hot at the time) is cast as the young Charlie âLuckyâ Luciano, arguably the most respected and successful figure in organized crime in the 20th century, as the film documents his rise to power, bringing together other legendary figures around him and establishing the first ever so-called âCrime Commissionâ, where bosses from all over the country put their decisions to a vote instead of having one Don to rule them all. The performance certainly shows Slaterâs limitations as an actor: Despite being brilliant in other work of the time like Heathers and True Romance, Slater employs his usual Nicholson-esque charm to play the part, instead of immersing himself in this real-life character (itâs particularly aggravating how his opening narration employs a thick Italian accent, yet the rest of his screentime he talks in his normal speech patterns); As Meyer Lansky, the Jewish mobster smart enough to stay out of the spotlight and out of jail his whole life, Patrick Dempsey does a little better, though the hackneyed script doesnât give anyone a chance for development; Richard Greico (a hot glamour boy at the time) brings nothing to the table as Bugsy Siegel, instead showing off a series of glamorous closeups most of the time; Costas Mandylor may very well be a good actor, but his Frank Costello is given almost nothing to do; F. Murray Abraham as their âmentorâ, Arnold Rothstein (think 1919 World Series) does his best with the tortuous dialogue. Then there are the two actors playing the ârival bossesâ whom our heroes must bring down: First there is Anthony Quinn, as usual in his career, tossing any sense of subtlety out the window as the grunting Joe The Boss, almost always depicted as wolfing down a huge plate of food when onscreen; and Michael Gambon as Don Faranzano is just as grotesque, while projecting none of the presence that a true crime boss would seem to exude, though his monologue about Jews is so hateful that Iâm surprised it made it into the film. As bad as these two are, the worst performance (maybe ever) has to go to Nicholas Sadler as the fearsome real-life hitman Mad Dog Coll: Bringing hammy acting to a new high as he cackles like a five-year old doing mob hits. On the plus side, Lara Flynn Boyle as Luckyâs love interest looks hotter here than maybe she ever has, even as she suffers through an overly arty sex scene with Slater, and the Maniac Cop himself, Robert ZâDar (with his freakishly large jawline) brings the usual menace as a henchman, and even Chris Penn shows up here, even as the script seems confused as to which side heâs on. The film doesnât skimp on the violence thankfully, but it does so on having a coherent story or good directing, even resorting to clichĂ©s that had been spoofed in Johnny Dangerously nearly ten years earlier. In the end, a massive failure, though a truly well-done and epic story about the New York mob scene of the era would still make a fantastic flickâŠ
4/10