Sindacato assassini

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

Peter Falk's almost scarily authentic performance as Reles steals this otherwise mediocre account of the real-life Murder Inc., which made latter-day gangsters like the characters in Goodfellas seem like choir boys in comparison. Though allegedly based on the Turkus-Feder book, most of this is complete fantasy. The central "love story," the Whitman and Britt characters, is utterly ridiculous as well as completely fictitious. The portrayals of Lepke and Mendy Weiss are interesting; the fatso playing Albert Anastasia is completely mischast.

The scene at the end is a copout, evidently for fear of offending the NYPD.

The real story of Murder Inc. would be a fascinating movie, instead of this drivel. Even so, this is worth watching because of Falk.

10 years before Peter Falk racked up a trunk-load of Emmy's and many more nominations for his his work as Columbo, he had two roles that would stand out in the film world. One was Pocketful of Miracles in 1961, and the other was this film the year before.

His performance as the contract killer Abe 'Kid Twist' Reles is the best thing about the true-life mob story. While most of the other characters just seem to float through the movie, he was intense ans you could see the promise that would lie ahead for him.

Stuart Whitman, who would get his only Oscar nomination a year later, was also good as Joey, who got caught up in the rackets. May Britt, who would leave the movies to marry Sammy Davis, Jr., was also very good as Joey's wife.

The movie seems more like a documentary when it is not focused on these three characters. As an added bonus, you get to see the legendary Sarah Vaughan in the movie.

I remember watching this movie on TV with my father in the mid-60s when I was about 10 years old.

When Peter Falk was on the screen, my father said that when he was about my age (in the early 1930s), he used to set pins in a bowling alley in Brooklyn, and the real Abe Reles bowled there nearly every day.

I recall what a mad dog that Falk portrayed and how it chilled me that my dad set pins for him.

I will be on the lookout for this movie again, so I can piece it all back together again.