Mobsters (1991)

User Rating:

5.5/10   

Director:

Michael Karbelnikoff

Writers (WGA):

Michael Mahern (story)
Michael Mahern (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

26 July 1991 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Tagline:

They rose from nothing to rule everything.

Plot:

The story of a group of friends in turn of the century New York, from their early days as street hoods to their rise in the world of organized crime...

Plot Keywords:

Death | Revenge | Mafia | Italian American | Betrayal

Awards:

2 nominations

Cast

Christian Slater	...	Charlie 'Lucky' Luciano
Costas Mandylor	...	Frank Costello
Richard Grieco	...	Bugsy Siegel
Jeremy Schoenberg	...	Crapshooter
Miles Perlich	...	Crapshooter
Alan Charof	...	Rabbi
Patrick Dempsey	...	Meyer Lansky
Anto Nolan	...	Irish Cop
Rodney Eastman	...	Joey
Andy Romano	...	Antonio Luciano
Bianca Rossini	...	Rosalie Luciano
Stevie Restivo	...	Little Brother
Caroline Gillette	...	Little Sister
Robert Z'Dar	...	Rocco
Michael Gambon	...	Don Salvatore Faranzano

Also Known As:

Gangsters (USA) (working title)
The Evil Empire
Das teuflische Imperium (Germany) [de]
Die wahren Bosse (Germany) [de]
El imperio del crimen (Argentina) [es]
El imperio del mal (Spain) [es]
I aftokratoria tou eglimatos (Greece) [el]
Império do Crime (Brazil) [pt]
L'impero del crimine (Italy) [it]
Mafijasi (Serbia) (TV title) [sr]
Mobsters - mot maktens höjder (Sweden) [sv]
O Império do Mal (Portugal) [pt]
Pahuuden valtakunta (Finland) [fi]

Runtime:

104 min | Brazil:121 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Australia:R (original rating) | Iceland:16 | Argentina:18 | Australia:M (cable rating) | Finland:K-18 | Malaysia:(Banned) | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

160 San Rafael Avenue, Pasadena, California, USA

Company:

Universal Pictures

Trivia:

Michael Gambon's first American film.

Goofs:

Continuity: The results of Rothstein's first card deal on the table are not visible subsequently.

Quotes:

Lucky: [to the fledgeling Mafia Commission, at a meeting hosted by a young Al Capone] ... You all know how I got this scar. Maybe Joe Profaci, here...
Joe Profaci: Wait a minute. What're you saying?
Lucky: Don't worry, Joe. Maybe you knew it was gonna happen to me, maybe you didn't. But by the old way of doin' things... If I became boss now, I'd have to hit you in case you knew. And all of you shrug, except some of you are friends of Joe's. And one day I might do something that upsets you, so then you'll hit me. And then YOU'LL become boss. My friends, they'll hate you for that. Then somebody else becomes boss, and so on, and on... You know what I call that? Stupid. Very stupid... We're all bosses here.
Joe Profaci: What then, Charlie? We're gonna vote on everything?
Lucky: That's right. Everybody here... is equal.
Meyer Lansky: Corporations have a board of directors, a Commission. So will we.
Lucky: Now, I have friends. They're not from Palermo, they're not from Sicily... They're not even Italians. They're Jewish. But they're still my friends. And I trust 'em.
Al Capone: You say there's gonna be no boss, but you're startin' to talk like one.
Lucky: I've learned. Every organization needs somebody standin' out front. Call it a figurehead, a leader, a headman, a kingpin, a president, whatever. It doesn't much matter to me who does it.
Joe Profaci: I say we make Charlie Luciano head of our National Commission. Who agrees?
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Men Named Milo, Women Named Greta (2000)

Cheesy "Brat Pack" Gangland Melodrama

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.