Labels: British Cinema, Colin Farrell, film, mob, movie review, Ralph Fiennes

Screenwriters: Francis Ford Coppola (The Cotton Club) and Mario Puzo (Superman II)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather: Part III)
Actors: Al Pacino (The Devil's Advocate), Robert Duvall (The Apostle), Diane Keaton (Annie Hall), Robert De Niro (Goodfellas), John Cazale (Dog Day Afternoon) and James Caan (Thief)

Labels: Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, film, Francis Ford Coppola, James Caan, John Cazale, Mario Puzo, mob, movie trailer, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall

Screenwriters: Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, Gianni Di Gregorio, Massimo Gaudioso, Roberto Saviano and Matteo Garrone
Director: Matteo Garrone (First Love)
Actors: Salvatore Abruzzese, Simone Sacchettino and Salvatore Ruocco

Labels: film, mob, movie trailer

Labels: British Cinema, Colin Farrell, film, mob, movie review, Ralph Fiennes

Short Review: Praise worthy performances – a shame worthy film.


Jack DiNorscio (Vin Diesel) is a known mobster is up on charges of conspiracy. DiNorscio and his partners in crime are party to the longest criminal court case in American history. This means it was an extremely expensive trial that spent the efforts of prosecutors, the jury, the defense lawyers and the court for over two years. All of this to nail a group of men who the prosecution insisted were involved in all sorts criminal activity. Jack, a mobster with a broad and appealing personality, decides to defend himself. As the trial lingers, Jack’s courtroom antics cause trouble for both the prosecution and the defense.

Diesel’s performance is remarkable primarily because it is Diesel giving the performance and it doesn't stink. In an obvious attempt to step away from being pigeonholed in the no-mind action films he has become known for (Pitch Black, xXx, The Fast & The Furious) Diesel manages to show he has enough talent to help out a more serious production,. He handles the comedic aspects of Jack’s personality easily. Where Diesel’s performance does best is when he is out of the courtroom or confronting a serious situation. Diesel’s transitions seamlessly from court jester to a man concerned with his own fate. I was rather surprised, I thought he was only capable of grunting and pointing. He's not going to win an Oscar, but this film should open him up to headier stuff than Babylon A.D. and The Pacifier.

Peter Dinklage also gives a believable performance as defense attorney Ben Klandis. Dinklage (The Station Agent, Elf) is at once a confident power-attorney, while also being someone dealing criminal riff raff. Much of the court case is completely out of his hands. Dinklage (buttressed by Sidney Lumet’s sharp script) plays the duality of this role with deft.

This film as a whole is very well done. The problem is that the film asks the audience to cheer for the bad guys. Again, this is a trail of mobsters and the audience is manipulated to loathe the prosecution and cheer for the mobsters to be set free. To his credit Lumet goes out of his way to make certain we understand these men on trial are murderers and thieves. To his shame he doesn’t condemn the men for their crimes.

I recommend this film is strong cautions. Like Pirates of The Caribbean, this film uses the force of personality to get the audience to embrace bad men and despise good ones. This is an entertaining and well-crafted film but be wary of its moral retardation.


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Labels: film, Jack DiNorscio, mob, movie review, Peter Dinklage, Sidney Lumet, Vin Diesel

I have mixed feelings about this film. Ridley Scott is a workman who has dutifully made very dense, impressive films. His best movies (Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Thelma & Louise, Blade Runner, Alien) are strongly constructed and very direct. When he is on he is one of the most confident storytellers making movies today and I think that is his real appeal. These films don't wander, they choose their path and he mines the narrative for all it's worth. This, and his heroes tend to be blue collar in their thinking and manner. This outing is a little different. He seems less secure in his story and the whole film suffers from a lack of focus.

The film tells the story of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), a drug dealing crime boss who in the 1970's began funneling heroin from Vietnam to the United States. This was done by bribing military men to do his smuggling for him. Working against Lucas is Det. Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), an incorruptable cop with a failing marriage and a ex-partner who overdosed on Lucas' product. A third branch of the film comes from the horribly corrupt police department fronted by the threatening Detective Trupo (Josh Brolin). Everything is there to make one heck of a story, multi-dimensional characters, strong motives, a grand scale. Scott missteps however in his choice of focus. He concentrates on Lucas' part of the story. While this means we get an opportunity to watch Washington dig his teeth into a meaty role (something not as common as it should be) it also means we are cheering on the bad guy. Lucas is the hero of the story, Roberts (the real hero) is cast as the villain. Do not understand, Roberts isn't portrayed as evil, he's actually quite sympathetic, he is the villain when we look at the narrative's structure. Since Roberts isn't a real bad guy, Scott is forced to drag in the corrupt cops and Dect. Trupo to play this role. This makes the narrative a little cockeyed and other areas suffer for it. First, Robert's failing marriage becomes a unconnected distraction to the rest of the story. This could have been a meaningful and rich area but it comes across as shoehorned since the topic is only visited instead of explored due to time constraints. Moreover, Lucas and Roberts as men are not as deeply investigated as they should be because so much time needs to be spent jumping from one avenue of the story to the next. ***SPOILER*** By the end of the film, Lucas is caught and imprisoned. He turns on his hard won business, and it is noted that Roberts eventually defends the man in court. This remarkable turnaround mentioned in passing before the final credits is confusing because there is nothing in the film that hints that this would ever happen. A shocking turn like this should be born out by the nature of the character, there is little in the actual film to explain what happened in real life after the story drops off.

Overall, the film is a good watch but it fails to be a great film. The awkward script asks too much of the audience and despite the wonderful scene work and strong performances, the film fails to deliver as much as it could. It's better than most but still faulty.


Cautions: There's tons of violence, drug use and swearing.


Worldview: The following of the criminal instead of the cop doesn't make this a bad movie. It is obvious that a criminal can make an effective hero (Godfather II leaps to mind). There needs to be a coming to Jesus moment however. The criminal needs to acknowledge his deeds, to be held to account. This film has this scene in the end, but it feels flat due to a lack of depth. Lucas is shown to be a criminal but he's not often shown to be acting criminally. He kills a man on screen but this man is a competing thug who is clearly menacing him. It comes off as more of self-defense even though he murders the man in cold blood. Since Lucas' crimes are watered down to make him more appealing, the power of his confession loses much of it's punch. This final conversation is a gentle twack upside the head of the audience alerting them that while we have been on the side of the criminal, what he is doing is indeed evil. This film doesn't come out in favor of murder and selling drugs. But it doesn't necessarily clearly condemn it either. When we look at the film's portrayal of almost all cops as being on the take and shown to be more villainous than the drug dealers the movie's finale is morally muddled and therefore misleading.


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Labels: cops, Denzil Washington, drugs, film, mob, movie review, Russell Crowe

Labels: cops, drugs, Eva Mendes, film, Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Wahlberg, mob, movie review, Robert Duvall

There are plenty of guns, shooting, blood and cursing - so its a little like hanging out Tom Sizemore on a Friday night.

This film is a well stylized bullet fest with some very clever dialog thrown in for good measure. If hyperbolic, posturing characters and ridiculous gunplay are your thing, you’re in for a ride, but I wouldn't recommend this personally. While inventive, it unashamedly dips into coarse violence for the sake of simply being violent. The smart dialog and sharp filmmaking give the impression there's something more going on than blood and guts, but there isn't. This is all flash and no substance.

Overall, this is a smart person’s version of a dumb shoot ’em up - but if you're smart enough for this movie, you're probably too smart to want to sit through it.



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Labels: Ben Affleck, Common, FBI, film, mob, movie review, Ryan Reynolds, shoot em up

Short Review: There is exactly one too many naked men in this film – that is to say there’s a naked man in this film.

This is a brutal film and not for the queasy. The film opens with a gory throat slashing and then moves directly to a pregnant woman hemorrhaging at a convenience store. If this seems like a harsh way to open a film you can stop reading now, this isn’t the film for you.

The film showcases a family of Russian mobsters operating in London. Anna, a midwife (Naomi “how can someone so pretty be so boring” Watts) looks over a baby after the baby’s anonymous mother dies. Having only the mother’s diary (which is written in Russian) for identification, Anna decides to have a local Russian immigrant restaurateur translate the book. Unbeknownst to Anna, the restaurateur (Armin Mueller Stahl) is the head of a crime family and the dead girl is one of his sex slaves. Anna is quickly pulled into the web of the mobsters which includes the stoic Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). If you don't think this sounds like a compelling narrative, you’d be right. The story is rather flat, but the lack of a fantastic arc to the story lends more credibility to the piece in a certain way. This is a mob movie with all of the contrivances removed. Since it is devoid of stylized assassinations and gangland battles, we are left with a stark character piece that is all too willing to show the bad side of those involved.

Mortensen (Hidalgo) is the real treasure in the film and he commands over the other performances. His Nikolai is an intensely interesting yet utterly despicable character. This performance is a clear candidate for a best actor nod and deservedly so. The man is willing to make risky moves in his career. Following the Lord of the Rings Trilogy it is certain he could have written his own ticket and gone the usual Hollywood route. Mortensen has chosen a different path and followed with more complicated roles that reveal an actor more interested in making intelligent works than popcorn fluff.

This film reteams director David Cronenberg (Scanners, The Fly) and Mortensen. Much like their previous effort, A History of Violence, this film studies violent characters and the morally confused universes they inhabit. This piece is filled with harsh scenes of cruel people doing cruel things to one another. Many feel that violence in film is inherently a bad thing. In particular people despise the acts like the ones found in this movie which seem to fail to provide a clear moral denunciation of the violence. I disagree with this view provided there is context and meaning to the violence. The violence in the film is not stylized nor is it cinema friendly. There’s a sense of dreadful inevitability to every horrifying act. The criminals are predators and they do what predators are inclined to do – hunt, destroy and consume. When a man is murdered by an opposing mob family or when a woman is introduced into sexual slavery, it is treated as a natural act no different than the killing of a weak elk by a lion. Those who live by the sword die by the sword so those involved should be shocked when their time comes. Cronenberg orchestrates the adult content to full effect. An example of this is the movie’s most striking scene where Mortensen’s character Nikolai is attacked in a steam bath. Nikolai and his two assassins slash at each other with knives, wrestle and fight. During this Mortensen is completely naked. His full frontal nudity is difficult to view not only because…well…Aragon’s personal hobbit is on display – but because his nudity, in light of viciousness of the attack, serves to bring an uncomfortable vulnerability to the scene. Many will be disgusted by the violence and frank sexual content. Some will claim the adult content is unneeded or at least too casual. I’d argue that the seemingly gratuitous nature of the sex and violence replicates how gratuitous they are when performed in real life. In an age when Hollywood is all too willing to show girls being tortured to death on screen (Hostel, Saw II, Wolf Creek) without a meaningful moral structure condemning the acts, seeing a piece treating violence in such an honest fashion is almost a relief.

Again, this is a very harsh movie. The blunt view of violence and criminality will be too much for many audiences and makes this a hard film to fully recommend. If you are able to handle the rough stuff, you’ll find this an intelligent and striking film. If you have any concerns about the content at all you’re probably best served by simply skipping this one. It’s a good film but it’s not worth it if you have problems with raw material.



Cautions: Blood, gore, violence, frank sexual acts, there's tons to be cautious about here.

Worldview: In a way this film paints a valuable look at what sin can and will do when left to fester. Morality, when discarded, is a difficult thing to regain and impossible to hold when one doesn't turn from their sin. At one point Nikolai claims he died when he committed his first crime as a kid - he was right. Those who fail to cast their sins aside are the living dead and will find no peace.



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Labels: film, mob, movie review, Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel

Labels: mob, movie trailer, Naomi Watts, Viggo Mortensen, Vincent Cassel

Labels: Ben Affleck, Common, FBI, film, mob, movie trailer, Ryan Reynolds, shoot em up