By the Gun

Three stars only because of the performance by Slaine as Nick's friend. This movie is comically bad. Every time you see the lead character he is either lighting a cigarette (he lights no fewer than 5 cigarettes in the opening scenes alone), or tossing a long, freshly lit cigarette out a car window. It almost seems as if somebody in production decided Nick looks good with a full Marlboro 120, but not with one that is half smoked. If it didn't mean sitting through this mud again, I'd love to go back and see exactly how many times a cigarette is lit by either Nick one of the other one dimensional wannabe gangster characters. At any given time somebody is flipping open an old school zippo and doing a Fonzarello routine lighting his smoke. The only saving grace in this film is the performance by Slaine as Nick's best friend. This guy is extremely watchable in this role (and lights up the screen instead of a smoke).

A young gangster (Nick) achieves his lifetime goal of joining the Mafia and we see the struggle it causes between his family, friends and girlfriend. This is a well acted piece with a nice turn from Harvey Kietal as a crime Boss. Nicks life is complicated by his long term partner in crimes gambling indiscretions and this leads to an explosion of violence where everyone is affected.

Downbeat locations and realistic dialogue seem to add a feeling of doom for the Mafia lifestyle that is portrayed as dying out. The film is a bit reminiscent of The Town but on a smaller budget. Well worth the money as a rental but it is unlikely that you will feel the need to rush out and buy the Bluray. An all round solid effort.

i watched this earlier today, its fairly well filmed, realistic locations etc but to be honest is was clear after 30 mins or so that i was really wasting my time, even so i decided to see it through to its bitter clichéd predictable end, it amazes me how actors of the calibre of both Toby Jones and Harvey Keitel ended up in this movie all be it playing bit parts... maybe they 'had to do a little favour for someone' by being in this very average clichéd seen it all before type film... a familiar tale of protection rackets, strip clubs, hits going wrong, family loyalty, revenge and of course no one gets away clean! including the audience! 4/10

There's nothing essentially new in this piece. Despite that it is still a worthy movie, and will please fans of mob dramas. It's extremely well cast, better, I think, than the recent Gotti. So it comes across as genuine, with plenty of evil types, and these horrible men contrast well with the selfish and naive lead, all giving really good performances with an edgy and convincing script. The soundscape is minimal yet brooding, and works well. The sub-plots of love, friendship debt and family relationships gel really well with the overarching theme. It all leads to a rather surprising conclusion that was excellently done. My grips with it are that the promise of establishing shots that this film would include good cinematography never really materialised, though some of the down and dirty locations were well chosen. It certainly has that poorer suburbs of New York look down pat, like the Sopranos sometimes does, or movies like Black Mass. By The Gun is not an original idea, but it is really well made and the actors here have definitely risen to the occasion.

I won't say this film is a pure masterpiece but it is definitely a good film noir. I admit it is slow, sometimes a little too long on some scenes, such as this one in the warehouse and borrowed from RESERVOIR DOGS, with a little too much talking. But the story, even foreseeable and cliché on some points, reminds me Phil Joanou's STATE OF GRACE, remember, starring Sean Penn, another film noir involving friends, brother and the gang, where Ed Harris could be imagined in the Harvey Keitel role. Yes, I definitely love this little unknown, at least, not known enough, feature very dark, gloomy and not for all audiences. I have seen many of this kind and have hundreds of those in my huge Library. I will never get tired of that. Never, over my dead body.