Street Boss (2009)

Touches You

Great Film overall

As Good As It Gets

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The story of one of Detroit's most notorious criminals as told be the agent who investigated him. Vincent Pastore is on screen for about a minute playing a Midwesterner with a heavy Bronx accent--Hollywood short hand for how gangsters are supposed to sound regardless of the setting. "Jimmy Calone" also sounds like a stock character from New York although it takes place in Michigan. There's a half-baked subplot about a woman in love with a criminal and the usual thrown together clichés. Okay, so not many people would defend the "Street Boss" because of the crimes he was alleged to have committed. I will say this for the man. The movie made it seem like he had a problem with Jewish people. Well I'm here to tell you that I happen to be from Detroit and my Jewish cousin worked in his health club. He was treated very well. When getting a story such as this one you have to consider the source.

The Michigan film industry, which had produced such classics as Christopher Reeves' SOMEWHERE IN TIME, not to mention Otto Preminger's ANATOMY OF A MURDER (if you count the Upper Peninsula as part of Michigan, which I guess you have to if you consider Toledo part of Ohio) was destroyed nearly single-handed by Saginaw construction company scion Mark Bierlein (a middle-aged man with NO previous film credits), who fancied himself the next Sylvester Stallone and Kevin Costner rolled into one when he appointed himself producer, screenwriter, and balding schlub star of his own private spin on THE UNTOUCHABLES. (Besides pocketing beau coup bucks in state film credits, Bierlein was able to double dip through crane rental deductions.) Unlike ROCKY, Bierlein's FBI agent Phil Kerby does not beat the meat in the local walk-in freezer. Nor does he down five raw eggs in a glass of OJ. In lieu of these pursuits, he murders unarmed suspects, tosses wrongly suspected desk sergeants all over their office furniture, and combats Detroit's toughest Mafia boss with nothing more than a cold shower. The lone accomplishment of Jennifer Granholm, Michigan's eight-year Canadian-native governor, was to make her adopted U.S. foothold into Toronto South, in terms of tax-credit-supported film-making. But as soon as incoming local boy guv Rick Snyder saw the screener for STREET BOSS, he immediately curtailed such tax credits. "I'm just a bean-counting nerd," he told me at our barbershop the other day, "but even I know that starring a guy who looks like old Bierlein just so his family business can scam some tax dollars stinks to high heaven. What's that site you blog on . . . yes, IMDb, I bet this dog show will be lucky to get 500 ratings, and if it averages even 4 of 10, I'm a monkey's uncle. I've seen wooden Indians more animated than Mark Bierlein." I guess my guv 'bout said it all.

Sometimes, low budget mafia movies can be a pleasant surprise, 'This Thing Of Ours' springs to mind. I started out with reasonable hopes that 'Street Boss' would be a run of the mill mafia verses FBI story. Its based on true events, when the Boston mafia were toppled by exhaustive FBI pressure. The movie starts out with a familiar face to any mafia movie fan, probably best known as 'Big Pussy' from HBO hit series 'The Sopranos'. He's in the movie for about 15 seconds and it all goes down hill from that point on. The main FBI charchter is such a wooden actor its painful to watch, the soundtrack score is awful, and the editing and direction are a shambles. The whole thing is just plain rubbish. If your looking for low budget or TV movies about the mafia, try 'This Thing Of Ours', 'Gotti', or 'Boss Of Bosses' and leave 'Sreet Boss' alone, i regret having watched this trash.

this is a so so gangster movie that sounds great based on the title! Actually all the story resembles a very watered down version of the untouchables, with a surprisingly hard knock FBI agent kicking a lot of backside and not taking no for an answer.From that perspective the film is quite good, however the main boss and his cartel do not really impress. It seems that it is merely three guys controlling the whole town which surely does not happen? The guy who was in NYPD blue seems to do a good job in his role though and actually the boss figure is a nasty piece of work, so it is watchable for that reason as well.Just not enough meat on the bones for this script. Hard to believe a small town is controlled by just three mafia guys with one hard nosed FBI agent determined to bring them down.