Rating: 4/5
Criterion Challenge 2024 | 14/52 | RNG (#1198)
You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it.
Cue “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes.
Tony throws a guy out of his bar for shooting up, and the guy he suspects deals it.
Michael thought he was buying a shipment of German lenses — he bought Japanese lens adapters.
Johnny Boy slips a bomb into a US Mailbox.
Charlie prays at a Catholic church while he hears Johnny Boy in his head talking about how useless confession and the whole thing is. But Charlie fears hell and doesn’t want to gamble on eternity.
Charlie vouched for Johnny Boy to Michael on a loan, and Johnny Boy hasn’t paid up, putting Charlie on the line. When Johnny Boy shows up at the bar throwing cash around, he only makes things difficult for Charlie.
Charlie’s Uncle Giovanni, a high-ranking mafioso, tries to get Charlie to distance himself from Johnny Boy. Charlie has a hard time rectifying the loyalties in his life when loyalty is everything, and none of them fit together.
Cue “Tell Me” by The Rolling Stones.
Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro are perfect here — they have a layered on-screen chemistry. Keitel went to Tisch with Scorsese. De Palma worked with De Niro for a few of De Niro’s first films. When De Palma introduced De Niro to Scorsese, the rest is history and whatnot.
Everyone on-screen works well together! David Proval and Harvey Keitel feel like they’ve been friends since childhood. They enjoy movies and laugh at jokes together. It’s that brotherly friendship that has homoerotic undertones because men can’t have a physical relationship in our culture.
This movie wasn’t Scorsese’s first, but it’s the one that has so many of his stylistic flourishes — the retro pop score, the slow-motion tracking shots, the gangster who trusts the wrong person and pays for it, and so on.
I prefer this story’s indie, low-budget style over the glossy look of his later films. Scorsese would tackle several other genres, but something always pulls him back to the mobsters.
** Stray Thoughts / Spoilers **
- The fights are loose and flailing — no one looks cool throwing or taking a punch.
- Charlie calling Tony “William Blake with his tigers” was funny.
- Baby Robert Carradine shoots David Carradine!
- I love the clips they show from the movies they see at the theater. I don’t know the first movie, but the second one is The Tomb of Ligeia.