STARRING: Robert De Niro, Robert De Niro, Debra Messing, Cosmo Jarvis, Kathrine Narducci, Michael Rispoli and every Italian American male actor over the age of 58 in Hollywood, or so it would seem. Written by Nicholas Pileggi. Directed by Barry Levinson. Budget $45 million. Running time 123 minutes.
From the men who've brought us, Goodfellows, Casino, American Gangster, Bugsy, Diner, Rainman, Young Sherlock Holmes and Sphere comes this long, bloated, dull dirge featuring two Robert De Niros for the price of one. Charting, or at least based on the last two great American Mafia dons, Frank Costello and Vito Genovese in the twilight of their years, with one, the nice one, Frank (Robert De Niro), wanting to retire with his wife Bunny (Debra Messing) and Vito (Robert De Niro), the really grumpy one wanting to take the other down, despite both being best friends since childhood. Vito killed two witnesses and had to go to Italy to avoid prosecution and so Frank took over the business, built a vast criminal empire and ran it, apparently without war, grief or internal conflict. But once Vito came back to the US after WWII he wanted everything back and then more and went to war to get it.
What follows is a really slow, boring film interspersed with flashes of violence to wake you up, which was good for me, because it woke me up twice in time to watch people get killed.
Filled with an entire cast of elderly overweight and mobility impared Italian-looking white men, except for the criminally underused and simply superb Debra Messing, this film becomes an absolute slog which leaves you lost at sea with a veritable who's who of now long-dead American Mafia gangsters with impenetrable names all sitting around in clubs, or diners playing cards while Robert De Niro as Vito does his best Joe Pesci impersonation as the dangerous Vito, while Robert De Niro delivers a measured performance as the seemingly kindly, nah saintly gangster who never carried a gun, Frank, loved his wife Bunny and had two dogs.
Starting with a botched assassination attempt on Frank Costello (Robert De Niro) by one of Vito Genovese's (Robert De Niro) men, the whole slow moving hunk gently trundles along gathering no momentum on it's pub-crawl through historical events until Frank, agrees to hand over all control to Vito at a gangster BBQ retreat with the heads of every crime family in America leading to the entire dismantlement of the Mafia in America.
Sounds like a great idea for a film and it is, shame it's not this one. In the hands of a in-his-prime Martin Scorsese this could have been a masterpiece but not so in Barry Levinson's hands, with a script originally written by Nicholas Pileggi back in the 1970s and turned down by every studio til now, this is a gangster film that lacks bite or any real drama. There are no young bloods vying for power just sad, slow moving old men played by sad, slow moving old men and when hits happen they happen with all the speed of an assassin on a zimmer frame.
Rather than watch this, go back and watch Goodfellows and Casino back-to-back and have a great evening rather than a thoroughly mediocre one.
5/10
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