Mobsters (1991)

I love this movie so much

Why so much hype?

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I love this movie not only because Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey, Richard Grieco were so young and cool in it but it told the story of Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Frank Costello from kids to gangsters to historical icons. My favorite line from the movie is "the bigger we get the more we're taking from other people". This movie didn't have the big budget that other gangster movies did. I appreciate the era it was done in because it was during a time when I was still an adolescent. Since I'm 1st generation in America I could relate to the movie and trying to grow out of the inner city "ghetto". The RZA of the Wu Tang Clan used several of the quotes from this movie in the Wu Tang albums which made it more relevant for me. I hope you enjoy the movie as it remains one of my favorite movies of all time.

It's New York in the 20s. The men exemplify sartorial splendor and the women are buffed. The photography has a burnished glow to it. The men are all Italians or Jews and they sit around a big table and proffer business deals. They gesture a good deal, running off at the hands. They greet one another operatically, with big smiles and hugs, and statements like, "'Ey, you lookin' good. It's been too long." They're all loving friends except that behind each others' backs they scheme like nobody's business (or "bidness") to kill one another. Then they break out the .45 caliber choppers and God help the Capo sitting at his table slurping down rigatoni and that glass of robust red vino. He's going to wind up with heartburn.I kind of enjoy movies like this, about big-name mobsters with names like Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano and Mad Dog Coll and Meyer Lansky. I thrill at the way the writers slightly bend the story so that we sympathize with, in this instance, Christian Slater as Luciano. He's the central figure -- and he's basically a VIRTUOUS MAN. He never kills anybody unless there's a very good reason for it. And the better the reason, the more bloody and barbarous the slaughter is. He catches Mad Dog Coll unawares and empties his Tommy Gun into the squirming body. The explosion of so many squib charges has never before been committed to celluloid. You remember how Sonny Corleone, James Caan, gets shot up at the turnpike entrance in "The Godfather"? That was nothing compared to what happens to Mad Dog Coll.My understanding is that our real, contemporaneous mobsters sit around enjoying these movies and chuckling over them, wondering, only half dreamily, who's going to play THEM in the next Mafia movie.The fact is, though, that this isn't very original. Roger Corman did it just as well twenty or thirty years earlier, on a lesser budget, and with tongue in cheek. This film tries desperately to be a serious look at what long ago became a joke. The sources that have been ripped off are not only gangster movies, beginning with "Little Caesar" and meandering through The Godfathers and Goodfellas, picking a bit here and a shtick there, but hard-core pornography. There are just enough plot points established -- who's bedding whom, who has a grudge against whom, and how about that tentative meeting between rivals -- to justify the more interesting scenes, the ones everyone is waiting for, sex in pornography, stupendous violence in "Mobsters." You haven't lived until you see a scarlet pool of gore spilling viscously across the tiled floor of a steam bath.Frankly, I'm getting a little jaded. I don't care if these moral morons protected their wives, loved their girl friends, went to the opera, enjoyed rugala, disliked fluorescent light bulbs, wanted to save the pandas, or had a magnificent stamp collection. It's the one percent of the time when they are putting a bullet through someone's forehead that bothers me. Showing us their human side amounts to a sort of apologia. You know -- I'm fundamentally decent. I just have this piacular quirk.They don't deserve this favorable propaganda. They deserve long jail terms, but then a lot of people belong in jail who are now sailing on Long Island Sound.

This was a horribly sloppy and downright insulting attempt at a mob movie. It ranged from moderately boring to downright ridiculous, with very little redeeming value in between. I mean, I literally can't believe how bad it was. Rather than write a huge essay, I'll just make a list of the good vs. bad, to keep it simple. First, the good:1. The cast is generally high quality. The use of the cast is another story altogether, but as far as pure talent goes, the cast was mostly top notch. 2. Very good cinematography. The locations were great and everything was shot and lit very well. Clearly a good deal of money was spent on sets as well. And that pretty much sums up the good. Now, onto the bad:1. The writing and story as a whole was awful. Just awful. It was nearly impossible to follow at times, with plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. And this is completely aside from the fact no part of the story bears any resemblance to reality whatsoever; I can appreciate a good historical fictionalization. But this was a complete mess. Its as if the writers themselves didn't know if they wanted it to be pure fiction or based on some kind of reality. The result is a story that is impossible to sink your teeth into, and characters that behave in absurd and utterly incomprehensible ways, particularly towards the end. The final scene is laughable in its utter absurdity.2. Horrible use of a good cast. Yeah, there is a lot of talent in this group, but they are not used very well at all. Listening to the extremely talented Michael Gambon attempt an Italian accent through his very heavy British accent is painful. The rest of the primary cast struggles with their tough-guy gangster-speak as well. It just doesn't work, and their performances suffer for it on the whole. When you factor in the horrible script on top of this, you get plenty of scenes that just fail on multiple levels. 3. Tons of period details done wrong. There is really no excuse here; when you have a film with this kind of budget and the amount of care put into the sets, it's downright insulting to the audience to get so many small details wrong. Plenty of furniture used was incorrect for the time and the suits and tuxedos were absolutely incorrect. In fact, Christian Slater as Luciano wore a tuxedo to what was supposed to be a major formal event in a key scene, and was clearly wearing a cheap CLIP ON Bow-tie with his tux. The kind you'd see a waiter at a catering hall wearing. You could see the clip. Never mind the fact that the clip-on bow tie had yet to be invented, but even if it were, would young Charles Luciano ever wear such a thing? Was it REALLY that much trouble to procure a real bow tie? That's the kind of flagrant error that should have gotten several people on this production banished from Hollywood. Overall, the movie is a disaster. It has a few entertaining moments, and can be pretty to look at, but if you're interested in watching a movie that is actually enjoyable (or makes sense), then skip it.

I recently watched this movie again after seeing once about 10 years ago. At the time, I thought the movie was pretty bad, but decided to give it another shot after a friend commented that he liked it. So, I watched the flick again and this time is was beyond awful that I don't know where to start. The acting is beyond awful and Christian Slater practically sleep walks through this. The movie also does a horrible job of letting us know how much time has gone by from scene to scene. We're treated to one of the worst montages that shows the "crew" rising, but have no idea what year it is. I also has a problem with the commission meeting with Masera. I mean, what was Mad Dog Cole doing there? I thought these ceremonies were for only made men, but apparently hit men and thugs are also welcome. Aside from that, the script looks like it was hastlily put together as some of the dialogue particularly the Rothstein characters lines are crap.I can't see how anyone could like this movie. The movie is a travesty and if viewers are interested in other films of that era they would be much wiser to check out Billy Bathgate, Bugsy, & Once Upon a Time in America.