Asesinato S.A.

During the very late 50s and early 60s, Hollywood made a bunch of real life crime biographies. I am pretty sure this was due to the success of "The Untouchables" on television and, like "The Untouchables", these movies kind of stuck to the facts....sometimes. Well, at least the names were right. But they were very entertaining.

The movie is about a group dubbed 'Murder Inc.". It was a clever creation of the mob...a contract killing organization that could not be connected easily to any of the murders since they simply were doing it for the cash. The film is about some of their activities but is mostly concerned with the government's efforts to prosecute them.

Although this story gives Stuart Whitman and Mai Britt top billing, their parts are really underdeveloped and you never get to know who these people were--especially Whitman's character, Joey Collins. There really is no star in this film...but a few of the hoods come off much better. Folks loved Peter Falk as Abe Reles, one of the most feared hitmen of all time....and he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for this. David Stewart was also excellent as the gang leader, Lepke.

A few times during the film, the filmmakers pulled their punches--especially concerning Reles. Although it did show him making a few hits using an ice pick, apparently this monster was known for stabbing his victims in the brain with the ice pick. Nice guy, huh?! This didn't bother me too much, as it was perhaps too ghoulish for 1960 audiences. What bothered me more was how the hairstyles (particularly Mai Britt's) were purely 1960...not late 1930s like they should have been.

So is it any good? Yes...it's very watchable but also a tad superficial and I felt after seeing it that there was so much more to the story...which there was. Worth your time...not great but quite good.

How much truth there is in this "true story" with "real people" is a question best left to historians of organized crime. The subplot of Stuart Whitman ("Joey") and May Britt ("Eadie") as a loving couple caught up in nasty doings certainly seems like the stuff of fiction. In any case, this is a low-budget "B" picture with limited resources for portraying the 1930s setting and documenting the historical events with authentic detail.

The one extraordinary element in the movie is the performance by Peter Falk as a contract killer. He is not only completely believable in the role but downright original, giving us a character who is merciless and vicious yet quick to take offense if anyone finds this objectionable. He can sound plaintively sincere even as we quickly come to see that he is incapable of sincerity. He has a host of minor quirks and tics that are fun to watch.

Face it, evil can be fascinating and even attractive, in a disturbing way. Another example in this movie is the portrayal of crime kingpin Louis "Lepke" Bucholter by David J. Stewart. While certainly not achieving the high level of Falk's performance, Stewart shows real style as the milk-drinking mobster.

There is one other bonus in this film: Sarah Vaughan, looking young and pretty, sings a nice song with that inimitable voice.

Murder, Inc. was a B picture and I remember seeing it as a lad as the second part of a double bill back in the days when they had such things. As I was from Brooklyn the whole story of the gang was interesting to a 12 year old. Needless to say the neighborhood of Brownsville had changed quite a bit even in 1960 from 20 years earlier.

The film is based on a book by the real Burton Turkus who must have consented to the dramatic license taken to bring the story of the taking down of Louis Lepke Burkhalter the only top crime boss to this day ever to get the death penalty. But the atmosphere of the Jewish neighborhood of Brownsville in Brooklyn is certainly captured as is the gang that made the place famous.

The film's a good one, not great by any means, but decent enough entertainment performed by a cast that are well known as competent players, but no box office draws in this cast. But one of them really made his own career with this film.

Peter Falk got the part of Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles who is one amoral example of humanity. Like Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano of more recent times in a career where he participated in a couple of dozen contract killings, when he's caught he offers to turn state's evidence. The end he met is part of gangland lore.

What Falk did was turn in a performance that so impressed the critics that he got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Remember Murder, Inc. was a B film, released with no fanfare so to speak so Falk's performance got the acclaim it did strictly by word of mouth.

The competition that year in this category was pretty good. The others who Falk was competing against were Jack Kruschen in The Apartment, Sal Mineo for Exodus, Chill Wills for The Alamo, and the eventual winner, Peter Ustinov for Spartacus. All of those others were high budget feature films with studios behind them with accompanying publicity machinery. Falk may have been there to round out the field, but just the fact he got there is an incredible tribute to his talent and that particular performance.

Murder, Inc. was not Peter Falk's debut big screen performance, but it is the one that made his career. The rest of the cast which consists of such familiar faces as Stuart Whitman, May Britt, Eli Mintz, Morey Amsterdam, Simon Oakland and Henry Morgan as Burton Turkus perform well enough, but Peter Falk as Reles will never leave you.

Talk about making one's own breaks.

Those who comment that Peter Falk elevated this movie to a very interesting one are right on the money. Falk, in his first role on screen, definitely plays the most interesting character. Of course, anyone who is a deranged killer is likely to be the focus of viewers' attention. However, the actor still has to be convincing and Falk does a fine job here as "Abe Reles."

He's convincing!

What made this film fun for me was not only Falk, but seeing a few other faces I haven't seen in years, such as May Britt, Henry Morgan and Stuart Whitman. Having watched a few "Night Stalker" TV episodes, I was still very familiar with Simon Oakland. The above actors were all very good in here, as was the rest of the cast, except maybe David Stewart as head crime boss "Lepke." He was too bland for his role.

We even get a song from a young Sarah Vaughan and a comedy routine from Morey Amsterdam!

Falk is the undisputed star of the film but second-place, to me, went to Morgan, who was quietly fascinating as the cop "Turkus."

Another nice thing was the DVD which gives us the original widescreen transfer of the film. There aren't many black-and-white CinemaScope pictures available for us movie fans to see, so it was pleasure to view this.

Thank God for Turner Classic Movies for digging up obscure stuff like this, not available on video or DVD, that would otherwise disappear. Not that it's that great a movie; it isn't. There are much better gangster films. However, it is notable for two things: it is Peter Falk's debut film, and it names names, something most gangster films before and after didn't do, unless the film was set well into the past. Of course, all the gangsters whose names are given are conveniently dead: Abe Reles, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, and Albert Anastasia. A notable omission is Meyer Lansky, who was alive at the time and thus could have sued for libel. But a pretty good overview of organized crime in the 30s and 40s. Albert Anastasia, by the way, was the real life model for Johnny Friendly, played by Lee J. Cobb, in "On the Waterfront." He was gunned down in a barber's chair while he was getting a haircut in a New York hotel barbershop in 1957. 8/10