Lansky (1999)

The Worst Film Ever

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

I saw the movie yesterday on HBO. Liked Robert Dreyfuss' performance very much. He is great! But didn't understand what happened to Lansky's first wife, Anna. She simply disappeared with no explanation and was suddenly "replaced" by Teddy. Did Anna die? Did the Lansky divorced? It seems that the producers made the movie only for the mob's admirers and/or experts, supposing that everybody would understand the story. There was a lack of some connections to make the movie understandable. Even so, I enjoyed it very much, especially because of Dreyfuss, who happens to be one of my favorite North American actors. Anthony La Paglia played well too and even Eric Roberts had a good performance.

This tells the story of Meyer Lansky, a big time crook or not depending on your viewpoint, the film shows lansky as a guy in his old age looking back on his life in short clip flashbacks, it tells us the major events and the development of his crime empire, the script is poor the acting stilted, despite some major acting talent in the film, at no point is there any dramatic tension or blood stirring action, it meanders towards a totally unstartling conclusion, it turns out the lights, puts itself to bed, and goes to sleep with anyone watching having already got there an hour beforehand, really don't watch it, it should have been attention grabbing and entertaining, its a 1 out of ten for me.

To put it in a few words: not enough real facts, not deep psychological analysis of the characters. The only good thing about the movie is the acting. But it does not make it for the movie length...After seeing the trailer, I waited the movie with very high expectations. I mean, hello, this was a movie about Meyer Lansky, the brain behind the Syndicate, one of the most influent mob leaders ever. An ocean of opportunities... And, what did I get for the two hours spent in front of the TV? just a big mark of question: "what did it want from me?!" There was not the rush and the fascinating action from "goodfellas" or "casino", nor the sympathetic romantic retrospective from "bugsy", and it was far from stories like "once upon a time in America". The biography is romanced and extremely brief. If you do not know the real life of Lansky, for sure you will not understand too many things from this movie. If you know it, you will be disappointed. And if the intention was to analyze the feelings and emotions of the character, well then, it didn't do it deep enough.

So Mamet wrote the script? I didn't notice. I was distracted by seeing my former mayor (of Herzliya, Israel) Eli Landau listed as one of the authors of the book. Some people consider him a bit of a hoodlum himself.Anyway, lore has it that Lansky never got involved in the actual rough stuff. In the movie we see him along for the ride once or twice, but basically he's a pencil-pusher so he's more boring than your average movie gangster. The conflict that we do find him involved in personally is his battle to take advantage of the Law of Return in order to stay in Israel. Unfortunately, though it provides the framework for the film, that conflict is underexploited for drama. Basically, we see Lansky sitting there as his lawyer explains things. There could have been other characters brought in to represent the other side for some real interpersonal confrontations.Part of the Israeli atmosphere, by the way, consists of continual playing of a variation on the song "Hayu Leilot" ("There Once Were Nights"), by Yaakov Orland and Mordechai Zeira. The song is not mentioned in the credits. Somebody oughta sue.