Billy Bathgate

Through a chance meeting in the street, our hero Billy Bathgate (Loren Dean) encounters and impresses the notorious 1930's gangster and bootlegger Dutch Schultz and even becomes his protégé.

Gangster films, like westerns, have so many cinematic plus points built in that making a totally duff one is pretty hard. This is a very professional piece of work, but hardly takes the genre to another level. One of the games you can play while watching is ticking of the clichés one-by-one.

(For the record the lead's poor mother - she works in a laundry - doesn't reject his "dirty" money, which I thought was compulsory in this type of movie, but most other must-haves are observed: The "surprise" summary execution and the chase through the period streets - to name but two - are both here!)

Dustin Hoffman is surpassingly good as a gangster who treats other people as collectable/disposable items. While he has a cold streak, you feel that only people that cross him are going to get the chop (one of whom is Bruce Willis - who looks like he took a small part to wear the clothes).

More ambiguous is his love (or is she?) interest Nicole Kidman who he seems to enjoy mentally torturing. I couldn't get a clear grip on her mentality or why she goes along with it all - not even for her own security reasons.

Dean is a good looking young actor who looks about ripe for corruption, but the role doesn't require him to be cool or knowledgeable merely look on as a witness, so that we can too. His attraction for Kidman, who seems to like casually undressing in public, is natural given that he is supposed to be a wide-eyed virgin.

Naturally hanging around with gangsters isn't a safe sport and soon Billy is in hot water that he has to think himself out of, but I think you can safely guess that what the final outcome will be.

Billy Bathgate is the work of solid pros from the script to the scenery (very believable 1930's NY), but the piece never reaches the heights and for long periods jogs along like a marathon runner conserving energy.

While delivering no fireworks or giving you anything new it gets you through to the end without being bored. Nevertheless it is hardly the type of film you would want to own or even sit through twice.

Well acted, with a nice dual story going on, add in Nicole Kidman naked and hey.. this isn't bad at all!! Add in Dustin damn Hoffman as our lead gangster, and stuff is getting interesting!! Our main character however, is BILLY- a streetwise kid with a heart of gold that wants to see if he has a shot at making it big with Dutch - the guy who owns the neighborhood. Things are in transition for Dutch, and Billy is exposed to the pressures and pitfalls of running a criminal organization by falling in with Dutch.

Enter Nicole Kidman- Dutch is smitten with her beauty, she's married but she has a thing for gangsters apparently...

This has a lot of tension in the triangle between Mrs. Harrison (Nicole), Dutch (Dustin) And Billy.

A cameo from Bruce Willis is a welcome counterpoint to the interpretation of Dutch, and you will recognize one of Dutch's henchmen from Fargo or Reservoir Dogs. ;-) I would have liked the ending to be a bit more elaborate but the ride there was pretty damn elaborate so it's all good.

It's kind of shocking to see less than 20 reviews (as of March, 2006) for a movie that stars Dustin Hoffman and Nicole Kidman and also has Bruce Willis and Loren Dean.

This story of gangster "Dutch" Schultz is told, like the beginning of Goodfellas, through the eyes of a young guy (Dean) who breaks into the business, so to speak. Probably in this case, he was more attracted to Kidman than the business, and who could blame him?

Dean was a complete no-name at the time and is a fine actor. Hoffman plays the crude Schultz and Kidman is his immoral wife. For some people, this film is remembered for quick full frontal nudity shots of Kidman. The most interesting person in the film, I thought, was Schultz' lawyer/confident Otto Berman, played by Steven Hill. Willis also helps make up a good cast, but his role is short.

For a gangster/action flick, there wasn't a lot of violence in here and I liked the period detail. It looks nice, especially on DVD. One downfall on some of these modern-day films: there isn't one morally upright character in the story and the filmmakers make Dean and Kidman into sympathetic figures. Overall, however, a good crime movie.

The big screen adaptation of E. L. Doctorow's novel shows impressive credentials and handsome production values; so why is the finished film so inert? Is it because the story itself, about a fresh-faced Bronx kid who, during the Depression, learns the hard facts of criminal life from mobster Dutch Schultz (and falls for the boss' girlfriend) is so familiar? Could it be the abrupt, anti-climactic ending to the film's clever hopscotch structure? Or is it because the movie is too much about Billy (played by clean-cut newcomer Loren Dean, a throwback to pre-Touchstone Disney) and not his psychotic mentor? No evidence is visible of the much publicized production problems other than a few scenes where dialogue was obviously overdubbed, but the film still looks as if it were made under duress. A strong supporting cast, and Dustin Hoffman's exciting performance as the vulgar Dutch, are saving graces.

This film can't make up its mind what it wants to be. Ostensibly it's about the 1930s gangster Dutch Shultz. However, the story predominantly rotates around the romance between Kidman and Deans characters. Yet it doesn't really sufficiently deal with either the romance or the life of Schultz. Neither does Schultz or the romance act as a secondary story to the other. So the movie loses out by not knowing what it is.