Meyer Lansky - Amerikanisches Roulette

This film succeeds in portraying Meyer Lansky as a victim in the whole procedure. This has to be rubbish - wasn't he allegedly the brains behind most of the mobster operations and died with millions of dollars of his ill-gotten gains stashed away somewhere in Switzerland? The constant leaping backwards and forwards in time, while expertly handled in "Once Upon a Time in America" was clumsily handled in this film. Dreyfuss, though a good actor, was miscast and therefore seriously out of his depth here: this only served to increase my dissatisfaction with the film. And what did happen to Anna? Why was it assumed that everyone watching the film was as au fait with the story as David Mamet? The only times the film lit up was when either Eric Roberts or Anthony Lapaglia were on the screen. It's a pity it wasn't the story of "Lucky" Luciano. Lapaglia dwarfed Dreyfuss both physically and metaphorically every time they were on screen together. All in all if you like gangster movies fact or fiction, I'd advice you to miss this one.

To put it in a few words: not enough real facts, not deep psychological analysis of the characters. The only good thing about the movie is the acting. But it does not make it for the movie length...

After seeing the trailer, I waited the movie with very high expectations. I mean, hello, this was a movie about Meyer Lansky, the brain behind the Syndicate, one of the most influent mob leaders ever. An ocean of opportunities... And, what did I get for the two hours spent in front of the TV? just a big mark of question: "what did it want from me?!" There was not the rush and the fascinating action from "goodfellas" or "casino", nor the sympathetic romantic retrospective from "bugsy", and it was far from stories like "once upon a time in America". The biography is romanced and extremely brief. If you do not know the real life of Lansky, for sure you will not understand too many things from this movie. If you know it, you will be disappointed. And if the intention was to analyze the feelings and emotions of the character, well then, it didn't do it deep enough.

I saw the movie yesterday on HBO. Liked Robert Dreyfuss' performance very much. He is great! But didn't understand what happened to Lansky's first wife, Anna. She simply disappeared with no explanation and was suddenly "replaced" by Teddy. Did Anna die? Did the Lansky divorced? It seems that the producers made the movie only for the mob's admirers and/or experts, supposing that everybody would understand the story. There was a lack of some connections to make the movie understandable. Even so, I enjoyed it very much, especially because of Dreyfuss, who happens to be one of my favorite North American actors. Anthony La Paglia played well too and even Eric Roberts had a good performance.

There are a lot of truly great actors in this movie. Illeana Douglas. Max Perlich. Dreyfus. Eric Roberts. Lots of them. But the dialogue in this movie is horrible. The acting is stilted because of that. And the story is just not believable. It almost seems as if the writers tried to grasp onto the "mob" madness and cut and pasted other stories to come up with this one. It is not believable. Meyer Lansky was a gangster. This movie portrays him as some kind of innocent victim of circumstance. Simply untrue. He was not a victim. When you see this film, you get the impression that he was somehow compromised by the government because he was a Jew. A real look into who he was will tell a different story. And this is not it.

I'd seen a preview for Lansky on HBO a couple of weeks ago and it looked like a fascinating movie. Too bad the film couldn't meet the expectations. Richard Dreyfuss (Mr. Holland's Opus, Night Falls on Manhattan) stars as Meyer Lansky a gangster from the early 1900's. The film deals with his character throughout the film going back and forth from different ages. Dreyfuss is not the only actor to play Lansky in the film. Dreyfuss plays him from his 30's on, Max Perlich (Beautiful Girls, Georgia) plays him in his 20's, and a child actor plays him at a younger age. The film deals with his dealings in the mob and his family life. Eric Roberts (Runaway Train, Most Wanted) plays Bugsy Siegel and Anthony LaPaglia (The Client, Commandments) plays Lucky Luciano. Both of these actors do well, especially LaPaglia, but aren't given enough screen time. Richard Dreyfuss is very good in the lead, but is out-acted by Max Perlich playing Lansky in his earlier years. I know the film probably wanted a big name (Dreyfuss) but I would have preferred to see Perlich play him the whole time instead of Dreyfuss. The film takes some good choices on how to tell the story, but the story itself is kind of boring. It's interesting at times, but nothing special.