Tiro Rápido

I saw this movie on the movie channel and unfortunately missed the first few minutes of the film but found the rest of it intriguing. None of it made any sense, of course but I found myself unable to turn it off. The whole thing had a dreamlike quality to me. What the heck was the bug lady doing in this film, anyway? Was the lead guy a mob boss or a tap dancer turned to crime in order to make a living?

In spite of the shortcomings, I really liked the soundtrack. Especially haunting were the songs by the Tiger Lillies.

My advice is to forget the movie and buy the soundtrack (if you can find it anywhere - which I have not been able to do).

This is not a bad movie. Actually it is magnificent. I was searching for it for 4 years I guess and I finally got it. This movie, of course, can't be understood by Americans :)). So, dear potential viewer, don't believe comments made from US :). Don't watch the mob boss. Watch a guy (Russian guy, if you wish) who was gambling big. That is what the movie is about. About beauty and gambling for choices of the great thing called life. Mob factor is just an additional detail... just like in Godfather. That is not the main point of the movie. I agree that direction and actors (not the things they were supposed to do, but actors themselves) could be different (except Mashkov, he did well as always), but it doesn't shadow the whole movie.

This movie came very close to being a good flick. The direction needs to be a bit smoother to progress from one piece to the next to make it more plausible. In particular: The main character's need to escape is not explicit enough. Is he trying to kill himself? Is he trying to escape? His life does not seem to be that bad, so it makes it more difficult to swallow that he wants to leave his life so much. Also, it is not very clear how much "in love" he has fallen with Jennifer Jason L. If the movie was reworked with some more attention to these details, it would have been Great. On the other hand, for an indy flick, it's pretty good! Maybe if you have a couple of drinks, to dull the logical thinking, it would be more fun...

"The Quickie" tells of a decadent Russian mob family who lives in Malibu and...well, frankly, this awful attempt at drama isn't worthy of commentary.

Jason Leigh introduces herself to Mr. Mob-guy as being from "Pacific Exterminators" with huge letters in plain sight on her back which say "West Coast Exterminators". Eventually the mob-guys get suspicious because she was exterminating in a bedroom. (duh).

In another scene Mr. Mobguy plays Russian roulette giving a hooker $4000 to bet whether he'll live or die. She has 5 chances out of 6 of keeping the money if she bets "live". Well, she bets "die". (double duh) Later she complains it wasn't fair and wants to play again. (Triple duh).

The list of flaws just goes on and on while this intelligence insulting film stinks and sinks in a quagmire of lousy music, mediocre camera work, poor direction, boring story, etc. Pass on this loser. (D)

Note - The barebones DVD which I rented had no English same language subtitles or closed captions.

Once again I am a little confused by the websites 'plot outline' and many of the other comments.

This film seemed to me to be very little about the relationship between mother and son (only one important scene where the mob boss reproached his mother for being a drunk all his life), and more about a great number of other things. Sibling rivalry, the decadence that accompanies a criminal life, how life and money ultimately become of little value, how love can surface in the most unlikely circumstance, etc etc. The 'hitman' who was exceptionally good at the job and the mob boss fell for the exterminator in spite of himself. The irony of his brother 'sussing' what someone was up to and being over-ridden was not lost on him.

I thought it was a well made depiction of a dysfunctional family and its final disintegration. The storyline flowed, there was great attention to detail - a bug exterminator would be looking in all the rooms and a nervous mob member would get itchy about it - and though it wasn't a Hollywood glitz-flick I thought it was all the more authentic because of it. I really enjoyed it.