Big Boss

Lepke, played by Tony Curtis, goes from the turn of the century to 1940 looking pretty much the same doing each decade. Only in the movies. The sets are all wrong as well. The sets never seem to leave the 20s, when it is supposed to be the 40s. The "action" sequences are cheesy at best and the Italian gangsters are all lumped together in stereotypes, as the Jewish gangsters are the only one with families and a touch of humanity. The realities were that they were all equally scumbags. Mildly entertaining to see Curtis not age for thirty years.

Lepke traces the beginnings of Louis Lepke Buchalter from his days as a child thief to his eventual demise at the hands--or feet, if you will--of Old Sparky.

Pros: Tony Curtis gives an excellent performance as Lepke, conveying charm as well as ruthlessness. The other actors involved also give decent performances, particularly Milton Berle as Lepke's father-in-law.

As for the cons, the period sets don't look authentic. There was a big change in the streets and nightclubs from the 1920's to the 1940's in New York--not in this movie. Additionally, it's shown that Jack "Legs" Diamond was murdered by a contract killer, an ice pick in his ear. Nope. He was murdered in bed by at least three people. I guess killing him the old-fashioned way wasn't colorful enough for the producers.

Altogether, the film is fun to watch, buoyed by Curtis' performance, even though he doesn't age very much during his rise and eventual fall. But it's hardly accurate.

The life and fast times of Louis ¨Lepke¨ Buchalter from his days in reform school incarnated by Barry Miller to his days as an adult : Tony Curtis when marries Bernice : Anjanette Comer and as head of Murder Inc whose syndicate spattered the headlines of the day with blood and eventually his execution in 1944 . It was 1935 , the board of Murder Inc met to discuss business , everybody was there . Dutch Schulz attempts to kill prosecutor Thomas Dewey , but it isn't accepted by the Comission, then resulting a a death warrant gainst a main mobster . There Louis ¨Lepke¨ Buchalter decided to become chairman and all hell broke loose. He was the king of crime when crime was king ¡

Exciting mobster movie packs noisy action , thrills , intense drama with romance , grisly killings with high body-count , shootouts and lots of violence. The tale sticks close to the facts , taking here and there of the actual events. Being an acceptable and passable story though weighty and uninspired , at times . In fact , it results to be a peculiar attempt to do a Jewish ¨Godfather¨ that makes nothing of all its promising material . Depicting the rise of the Syndicate and Murder Inc with intervention of notorious mobsters as Lucky Luciano, Albert Anastasia , Dutch Schulz and the subtle change of tack under pressure from the clean-up campaigns of the late 30s and early 40s , as well as the fall of the killer gangster Louis Lepke Buchalter . Tony Curtis gives a nice acting in the lead role as the colorful gangster who carries out a thunderous criminal career and he'll stop at nothing , at whatever cost , to get his purports, including taking down witnesses , resulting in fateful consequences . Here shows up various famous mobsters as the main chief Lucky Luciano , Albert Anastasia , Vito Genovese , Gurrah Shapiro, , Bugsy Siegel , Dutch Schulz , Frank Costello , being played by notorious actors as Gianni Russo , Vic Tayback , Warren Berlinger , John Durren , among others . And , of course , the good guys and lawmen as Prosecutor Thomas Dewey and FBI chief : J. Edward Hoover .

It displays a colorful and evocative cinematography by cameraman Andrew Davis , subsequently a successful director. As well as moving and thrilling musical score by Kenneth Wannberg. The motion picture was professionally directed by Menahem Golan who created along with Yoram Globus the famous Cannon Productions. Rating : 6/10 , acceptable and passable . It isn't a classic , but watch worth seeing.

I have the 1975 paperback version of Lepke in my possession, and there are some scenes and characters in the book that never appeared in the movie.

The book opens with Lepke's body being brought out of Sing Sing on a sheet-covered stretcher. After the prison guards put his body in a truck and take it away, the novel then goes to the beginning chapter of Lepke's life.

It is the summer of 1912 in Brooklyn. We meet Lepke and all his associates as teenagers. The book mentions that Lepke was born on February 12, 1897. Lepke's father died suddenly and his mother claims that Lepke "was the death of him".

After Lepke commits his first robbery at a shoestore, he's sentenced to his first prison term at Sing Sing. He gets raped by a convict named Al, and gets beaten up by a convict mob for informing on him.

In 1922, Lepke gets released from prison and goes back to live in his family's old apartment. His mother has moved away to Colorado, and we don't know where his sister is.

Lepke goes to work for a gangster named Augie Orgen. After some disagreemnts with Augie, Lepke guns him down in front of a nightclub. He's quick to also bump off the eyewitnesses to the killing. He has his henchmen run down the club's doorman with their car, and has Augie's girlfriend and a real-life gangster named Legs Diamond killed with ice-pick stabbings. In real life, Diamond was gunned down by members of a rival gang.

Lepke makes friends with Lucky Luciano and Albert Anastasia, but soon things go downhill between them. They try to take over the garment industry, which is Lepke's territory, by exploding a bomb in a clothing warehouse. For a short while they form a union, which is threatened by crusading prosecutor Thomas Dewey. Dutch Schultz says they should kill Dewey before he gets enough evidence on him. Lepke refuses Schultz permission to carry out the hit, and Schultz angrily storms out of the meeting, saying he will do it himself. Apparently this is what led to the murder of Schultz and several of his henchmen at a restaurant in 1935.

Soon Lepke moves up from garments and into the business of illegal gambling. He opens up a slot machine joint, but Anastasia wants control of it, so he has Gino, one of his hoods, plant a bomb in one of the slot machines. A drunken man pulls the lever and the whole place goes kaboom. This starts another war between the Jewish and Italian gangs.

Lepke retaliates by having his men gun Gino down. In the movie, Gino was killed (or injured) by a bomb planted in his dish of spaghetti. Then Lepke gets into the drugs business, which makes Dewey start a crusade to bring him to justice. After Lepke is briefly detained and released by the FBI, he discovers that a shopkeeper named Joe Rosen squealed on him. Lepke has him bumped off, which only intensifies Dewey's crusade.

Lepke goes on the run for several years, and he finally turns himself in after striking a deal between himself and J. Edgar Hoover.

He is eventually convicted on all counts, including murder, and is sentenced to the electric chair.

Lepke is a great movie with a great cast, especially Tony Curtis (in the title role) and Milton Berle (as Lepke's father-in-law). Curtis and Berle both give excellent dramatic performances.

Rating: ****

Brutal, straightforward bio-pic of the notorious Jewish gang boss. Writers Wesley Lau and Tamar Hoffs tell their sprawling story with fidelity to the headlines and nary a hint of what made this complicated mobster-cum-family man tick. (Curiously, there's never a mention of Lepke's infamous Murder Inc. operation, opting instead to concentrate on his drug trafficking and extortion enterprises.) Luckily, Tony Curtis' riveting performance fills in what the writers' have neglected, transforming Lepke Buchalter into a disturbingly three-dimensional character. Tossing off Yiddishisms with a sneer, keeping his impish smile to a minimum, he plays Lepke as a stone-faced ruthless street thug with a yen for power and conservative family values. It's as though Sidney Falco from "Sweet Smell of Success" had finally taken over J.J. Hunsecker's column. Whether snarling out death orders or tremulously asking his prospective father in law for permission to marry, Curtis invests the role with a skillful understatement (as well as a Bronx boy's veracity).

In the film's best scene, a queasy mixture of eroticism and complex emotions, Lepke is on the lam and holed up in a trollop's apartment. As the woman brazenly tempts him, Curtis silently and eloquently conveys the anguish of a lonely man struggling to remain faithful to his wife.

The director Menachem Golan is rarely this subtle, striving for ethnic texture and period color and overdoing both. Grubby hook-nosed Jews, swarthy pasta-eating Italians, and outsize Fedoras are shoved in our face. The violence is luridly overblown (a prostitute gets an ice pick thrust in her neck during lovemaking), and sometimes downright preposterous (a plate of spaghetti camouflages an explosive device). But just try to turn away from Curtis. With Anjanette Comer as Lepke's doting wife; Milton Berle, surprisingly restrained as her father; Barry Miller as the young Lepke; Vaughn Meader as an unlikely Walter Winchell.