Mobsters (1991)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Really Surprised!

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

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.

MobstersThe worst part about being a young gangster is that no one takes your ice pick serious until it's too late.Luckily, the nextgen in this action movie have brains and bullets.When a fresh-faced Lucky Luciano (Christian Slater) meets youthful Meyer Lansky (Patrick Dempsey) the two, along with Bugsy Siegel (Richard Grieco) and Frank Costello (Costas Mandylor), make a name for themselves in the bootlegging racket.Over time, the gangster squad seizes control of NYC from the old bosses and divides it between the five main families.But can this new crime regime keep from crumbling under its own infighting?Overly violent and under acted, this loose interpretation of the upper echelon of the underworld's top brass fails to live up to its lofty ambitions.Incidentally, this film reinforces that the only way to get ahead in this world is to mow the older generation down with Tommy guns.Red Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.com

This movie is just plain awful. It's a textbook example of how "packaging" has ruined the art of film-making in Hollywood. It was obviously more important to the studio to fill up the screen with "bankable" stars than to make an intelligent, entertaining drama.The casting is horrible and the acting is strictly cornball. Anthony Quinn, that Swiss army knife of ethnic characterization, delivers yet another offensive, simplistic stereotype, a two-dimensional cartoon slob who stuffs his face with pasta and blubbers with faux emotion.The young stars who powered this fiasco into production are little better. The most notable aspect of their vapid portrayals are their glamorous but unbelievably pristine suits. In fairness, they've been given very little of substance to work with; did it really take two writers to butcher this story and concoct such clueless dialog? Luciano and Lansky were criminal geniuses in real life, smart enough to rule the underworld and avoid the long arm of the law, yet here they can best be described as "less dumb" than the rest of the idiots surrounding them.The worst crime committed by this movie is the screenplay, which wastes one of the most fascinating and dramatic episodes in the history of crime, the Castellammarese Wars that rocked New York in the late 1920s and solidified the structure of the modern American mafia. Typical of its idiocy is the misnaming of Maranzano as Faranzano. Apparently some wise old development exec decided that having two of the key characters with names that began with "Ma" was simply too confusing, so they kept Masseria and renamed Maranzano. There are several other inaccuracies as well. The movie is more fiction than fact, and not good fiction at that. It adds nothing of value to the body of gangland cinema.The beauty of "The Godfather" was that the writer researched the story he was telling and translated it into an epic tale that captured the spirit and reality of the mafia, changing the names of the characters but preserving the essence of their experience. "Mobsters" kept the names and threw everything else out the window.On top of all that, even the action sucked.That said, there is one redeeming moment in the movie. The chorus girls dancing in the club looked great and the dance routine was fairly good. Too bad it wasn't 90 minutes longer.

Mobsters casts four young players of the day as four of the legendary gangland figures of the 20th Century in their salad days. Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey, Richard Grieco, and Costas Mandylor play Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, and Frank Costello respectively. The film is a fictionalized account of how the four of them wound up on top of the gangland heap.Michael Gambon and Anthony Quinn play the two old style Mobsters who are rivals for the title of boss of all bosses in the New York City area. Playing Charles Ferranzano and Joe Masseria the two of them control most of the illegal liquor trade which gave organized crime in this country it's real foothold. But our young men prove to be tough, smart and resilient as they play off the two old bosses against the middle.Mobsters as a film captures the ambiance of New York during prohibition very well. I'm not sure I would have cast Christian Slater as Lucky Luciano, still Slater does very well with the part. Richard Grieco as Bugsy Siegel is very good, you can see the genesis of Warren Beatty's character when he played Siegel in his film, Bugsy. Note should also be mentioned of F. Murray Abraham as Twenties gambler Arnold Rothstein who was the initial sponsor of the young mobsters in training. And Nick Sadler is one frightening Mad Dog Coll. You'll see quite graphically where his nickname came from.Mobsters is good viewing, not exactly historically accurate, but actually sticks closer to the truth than most films of this type.