Amazon.com Essentials:
Bugsy represents an almost miraculous combination of
director, writer, and star on a project that represents a career
highlight for everyone involved. It's one of the best American
gangster movies ever made--as good in its own way as any of the
Godfather films--and it's impossible to imagine anyone better
than Beatty in the movie's flashy title role. As notorious mobster and
Las Vegas visionary "Bugsy" Siegel, Beatty is perfectly cast as a man
whose dreams are greater than his ability to realize them--or at
least, greater than his ability to stay alive while making those
dreams come true. With a glamorous Hollywood mistress (Annette Bening)
who shares Bugsy's dream while pursuing her own upwardly mobile
agenda, Bugsy seems oblivious to threats when he begins to spend too
much of the mob's money on the creation of the Flamingo casino. Meyer
Lansky (Ben Kingsley) and Mickey Cohen (Harvey Keitel) will support
Bugsy's wild ambition to a point, after which all bets are off, and
Bugsy's life hangs in the balance. From the obvious chemistry of
Beatty and Bening (who met and later married off-screen) to the
sumptuous reproduction of 1940s Hollywood, every detail in this movie
feels impeccably right. Beatty is simply mesmerizing as the man who
invented Las Vegas but never saw it thrive, moving from infectious
idealism to brutal violence in the blink of an eye. Director Barry
Levinson is also in peak form here, guiding the stylish story with a
subtle balance of admiration and horror; we can catch Bugsy's Vegas
fever and root for the gangster's success, but we know he'll get what
he deserves. We might wish that Bugsy had lived to see his dream turn
into a booming oasis, but the movie doesn't suggest that we should
shed any tears. --Jeff Shannon
