Crazy Joe... matón

My name is Luigi 'Good Looking Lu' DiMatti. I was a made man in the Gambino Crime family. I took the oath in 1956. I was in the crew of Alfred Eppolito, until he got demoted and drunk himself to death, then I went briefly in to Paul Castellano's crew. Under Alfred I was dealing H, under Paul that was impossible so i eventually moved to Jimmy 'the Clam''s crew and when he got whacked to Aniello's crew in Queens. I got 50 years in 1980, got out 2015, which is why you may not recognise my name and why I don't have a Wikipedia page. I was more of a keep my head down kinda guy, kept in the shadows, narcotics, gambling, shylocking, gambling etc. I'm 80 now and long retired, living in Florida now.

Anyway the reason for my comment is, this is the first time I saw this movie! I was not in the Columbo family, but I knew Joe Gallo, Gennaro Ciprio, all those guys.. I wrote a comment because practically everything in this film happened in real life! I remember those days very well. The names are changed, but the guy 'Jelly' I think was a real guy called, Joey Gioeli. I realise most people know this is about Joey Gallo, but I was surprised how accurate it was!

As a film, it looks very low budget. Peter Boyle is kind of one dimensional, but Torn is good, it has a lively script and it is excitingly directed.

I'm just sharing my thoughts as this movie brought back some old memories. I was in my thirties back then, we controlled New York! A lot of good guys died during that war. More I believe died in the nineties one, but I was in jail then

The mob life of 'Crazy Joe' Gallo.

This is fairly good mobster movie with some reasonably gritty moments that have aged like the 70s fashions.

It mixes the simplistic gangster narrative that you would see in 30s and 40s movies, with a low budget vibe of 70s New York. There is plenty of tough-talking Mafia lingo and insight into the power structures of certain families. I like that it is loosely based on some real people.

Some of the themes relating to the stereotyping of Italian-Americans and Columbus Day rallies are similar to those used in some plot lines of The Sopranos (only much better on that show). One of the strongest bits of spectacle in the movie is a recreation of one such rally.

The cast is very interesting, led by the amusing Peter Boyle, supported nicely by Eli Wallach, and featuring many recognisable faces popping up in numerous scenes.

The production values are pretty low, with action sequences that are not very memorable and some quite rough editing. One scene you can see an obvious jump in a sequence when Peter Boyle speaks. That being said there are some great location shots. Plus the opening sequence with the opera music and establishing shots is excellent.

It is certainly no classic, but I think it is essential viewing if you are a fan of mob movies.

Looking at it in retrospect I suppose this film turned out to be an okay movie which essentially involves a gangster known as "Crazy Joe" (Peter Boyle) who believes that his efforts working for the mob haven't been appreciated enough. So he decides to force the issue and create his own gang. The problem with his logic, however, is that although he was certainly a top-notch thug, he doesn't quite have the discipline or a good understanding of the intricacies involved in building a crime family. Anyway, I thought Peter Boyle did an adequate job but it was Eli Wallach (as "Don Vittorio") and Fred Williamson (as "Willy") who really stood out. I also enjoyed seeing Henry Winkler cast as one of Crazy Joe's thugs named "Mannie" and Paula Prentiss as Joey's wife "Anne". Even so, the pace of the movie sometimes seemed a bit slow and I occasionally felt that some of the movie had been left in the cutting room. Not a great film by any means but somewhat entertaining all the same.

Crazy Joe is a well made gangster picture starring Peter Boyle as the title character The names are all changed up but it's not hard to tell who's who. The cast is terrific Henry Winkler,Eli Wallach,Charles Cioffi all support a terrific cast of faces that any mob movie buff such as myself would recognize. There's only one problem this movie is very hard to find so catch it any way you can it's well worth it

"What do these Hollywood types know about gangsters?" (Crazy Joe, when he encounters a film crew on the street)

Ironically, a good point. (Or was the irony intentional? I doubt it...) Hollywood types have generally proved to know very little about the mob (or almost anything else for that matter), or at least often present aspects of that culture in a misleading or somewhat romanticized manner. However, there isn't too much silliness or idolatry going on here, i.e. CJ's mobsters are to the most part portrayed accurately/realistically, in other words as the uncontrollable sociopaths that they are and always will be. Thankfully, this isn't a Sydney Lumet picture in which the viewer is required/asked to sympathize with criminals by taking an irrational, liberal, childishly anti-establishment attitude. (See "Find Me Guilty", a fantasy mobster court-room drama in which a "happy ending" constitutes a dozen mobster defendants being acquitted of crimes they did commit...)

The radiant 70s look, a brisk plot development, and the generally good cast make up for some occasional flaws.

Fonz as a gangster?? He is about a head shorter than all the (fe)male cast members - and that includes Harve Villachaize. Truly threatening-looking. Not to mention his perpetual "mild-mannered accountant's" facial expression, which he cannot get rid off even if a team of top plastic surgeons tried to help him in that fantastic feat. That was a major casting blunder. What's next... Kate Hudson as head of NASA? Casey Affleck as Superman?

Another casting error, though far less dramatic than the Fonz fiasco, was picking Charles Cioffi to play a rising mob star. An actor's Italian name alone does not necessarily a suitable mafiosi make. He too lacks the aura of psychopathy that even the least violent mobster (which isn't saying much) has, lurking below the surface.

Why do mobsters' wives and girfriends, i.e. harlots, nearly always get portrayed favourably in movies? It doesn't take a brilliant deductive mind or world-class detective skills to figure out that such women can't be morally much more impressive than the scum they they date. Admittedly, Paula Prentiss's character is underdeveloped, but whatever little we see of her seems to be far too flattering for that kind of woman.

On one or two occasions the jumps from one scene to the next are too quick, making the flow of the movie somewhat shaky. It's as though the initial running time of CJ had been 30 minutes longer, and a commercially-driven butchering job had been implemented at the last minute in the editor's room.