Lansky - A Mente do Crime

I saw the movie yesterday on HBO. Liked Robert Dreyfuss' performance very much. He is great! But didn't understand what happened to Lansky's first wife, Anna. She simply disappeared with no explanation and was suddenly "replaced" by Teddy. Did Anna die? Did the Lansky divorced? It seems that the producers made the movie only for the mob's admirers and/or experts, supposing that everybody would understand the story. There was a lack of some connections to make the movie understandable. Even so, I enjoyed it very much, especially because of Dreyfuss, who happens to be one of my favorite North American actors. Anthony La Paglia played well too and even Eric Roberts had a good performance.

This movie could have been alot better. Meyer Lansky was to me far more interresting then both Siegel or Luciano. David Mamet is a great writer, but his script here just isn't that good. A few simple details were changed and the editing isn't all that good either. They should have told the audience which period we were looking at during certain times of Lanskys life. The movie begins around 1972 in Israel then we go back to the early 1900's in Russia and then to like 1912 in Manhattan, but you don't see that. You also don't hear about the 400$ million dollars that Lansky had in Sviss banks at the time of his death which is a fact by now. His Florida operations were also very known and he was the one who gave orders to both Santo Trafficante Jnr. and Carlos Marcello. Despite the lack of storytelling the acting is great. Richard Dreyfuss is extremely good as Lansky and Perlich also, but Roberts and LaPaglia somehow didn't fit in there. I give this movie *1/2 stars out of four.

There are a lot of truly great actors in this movie. Illeana Douglas. Max Perlich. Dreyfus. Eric Roberts. Lots of them. But the dialogue in this movie is horrible. The acting is stilted because of that. And the story is just not believable. It almost seems as if the writers tried to grasp onto the "mob" madness and cut and pasted other stories to come up with this one. It is not believable. Meyer Lansky was a gangster. This movie portrays him as some kind of innocent victim of circumstance. Simply untrue. He was not a victim. When you see this film, you get the impression that he was somehow compromised by the government because he was a Jew. A real look into who he was will tell a different story. And this is not it.

Made for HBO movies (particularly the ones with only one-word titles) have become the ‘in' thing these days. They carry a lot of prestige, and certain EMMY nomination for the lead (think Gary Sinise/Truman, Ving Rhames/Don King, Angelina Jolie/Gia). In fact, I'd venture a guess that most stars with a little forethought ask their agents ‘why can't I get one of those deals?'

They can be career builders, or a career jump-start, and suffice it to say there is incentive by many in the creative community to continue this lineage of quality programs.

But perhaps now the guild is off the rose. I mean, Meyer Lansky? The guy was boring in real life and even more so in the reincarnate. At least Gia was a lesbian drug addict.

Gangsters from Al Capone to Don Corleone have been romanticized quite successfully in films-but we know all that stuff. The made-for-HBO GOTTI should have foreshadowed to most that this genre has been overused, and abused.

Probably everything we need to know about Meyer Lansky we found out in fifteen minutes of BUGSY anyway.

Mamet's script is derivative and plodding, Richard Dreyfuss is not only unconvincing but over-the-top in his portrayal of Meyer Lansky. And the musical score is so retro-Godfather it's laughable.

Don't waste your time.

Certain friendships play a part in history in that without the relationship history itself might have been different. FDR and Winston Churchill for example. It works negatively too, just look at Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy.

In gangland lore and this was by no means easy in those clannish days the friendship of Italian Charles Luciano with Jewish Meyer Lansky. Crossing ethnic and religious lines was by no means easy then, but these two formed the national syndicate of organized crime that still is in operation.

Richard Dreyfuss and Anthony LaPaglia play the mature Lansky and Luciano characters. Eric Roberts is Ben Siegel otherwise known to those who didn't know him as Bugsy. You've seen parts of the story in Mobsters from Luciano's point of view and in Warren Beatty's film Bugsy. In Lansky the same story is now told from Meyer's point of view. The kid who saw pogroms in Poland and who fought with Ben Siegel's help on New York's mean streets to stay alive.

The main component of the Lansky Legend is that the man was never convicted of a major crime. As Dreyfuss says you keep it all in your head and write nothing down. You do have to have prodigious memory to do that and apparently Lansky did.

The story is told in flashback with an aging Dreyfuss in Israel hoping to settle there the rest of his days exercising the law of return. Politics intervened and he couldn't do it. He has some interesting explanations why.

It ain't exactly history but pretty close. These people fascinate us and will do so for the next century.