I'm sorry, I really tried to like this movie but it just was rather pointless.
Yes, it's the dramatization of the real-life rise to power of some of the most successful criminals in US history, however, the writers seemed to want to cram as much of their lives into as little time as possible. For instance, in one scene we see Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in a car that is then shot at by a hit-man. 5-10 minutes later in the film, they are all sitting in a room, talking about this incident with the hit-man...obviously some great deal of time has passed but this was a little confusing at first.
Perhaps if they had stretched the movie out another hour or so, they could have built up the characters some more, including the villains. When Christian Slater has his friends throw the don out the window, he says it is revenge for ruining his father. The ruining of his father took oh about 45 seconds of screen-time at the very beginning of the film.
I suppose the point is that there was no point to this film. It tried to show the intrigue of the organized crime gangs of the 20's and 30's and it tried to portray the rise of Bugsy Siegel, Lansky, Costello, and Luciano as well as be an action/drama/love story. It came up flat in all areas.
Christian Slater...his fake accent was pretty annoying as well. Luciano was born in Sicili and would not have spoken with such an accent anyway.
The Godfather, this was not. Goodfellas, this was not. I like movies about the Mafia like anyone else but this was just weak.
Yes, it's the dramatization of the real-life rise to power of some of the most successful criminals in US history, however, the writers seemed to want to cram as much of their lives into as little time as possible. For instance, in one scene we see Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in a car that is then shot at by a hit-man. 5-10 minutes later in the film, they are all sitting in a room, talking about this incident with the hit-man...obviously some great deal of time has passed but this was a little confusing at first.
Perhaps if they had stretched the movie out another hour or so, they could have built up the characters some more, including the villains. When Christian Slater has his friends throw the don out the window, he says it is revenge for ruining his father. The ruining of his father took oh about 45 seconds of screen-time at the very beginning of the film.
I suppose the point is that there was no point to this film. It tried to show the intrigue of the organized crime gangs of the 20's and 30's and it tried to portray the rise of Bugsy Siegel, Lansky, Costello, and Luciano as well as be an action/drama/love story. It came up flat in all areas.
Christian Slater...his fake accent was pretty annoying as well. Luciano was born in Sicili and would not have spoken with such an accent anyway.
The Godfather, this was not. Goodfellas, this was not. I like movies about the Mafia like anyone else but this was just weak.