Roubo a Máfia

When a small time stick-up man attends John Gotti's trial he finds out that everyone goes unarmed at the Mafia social clubs. He and his girl friend start stealing from the mob.

Raymond De Felitta tackles a daunting task in his handling of Jonathan Fernandez's script. None of the characters is the least bit appealing at the beginning of the movie. The leads are selfish and stupid, Ray Romano's reporter is just in it for the story and Andy Garcia's crime boss seems a murderous enigma. Yet by the end of the movie, they are all sympathetic characters caught up a mess they have no control over.

A kind word should also be offered to Chris Norr for his fine cinematography. The street scenes, mostly shot in northern Queens, are hideous yet illuminating.

After watching a run of really terrible movies (Monuments Men, I Frankenstein, Invasion Day) I was desperate for a good movie....well I found it! Not just a good movie, but a great one. I was not holding out much luck from the hopeless title of Rob The Mob, but 5 minutes in and I was sold. Nina Arianda as 'Rosie' absolutely steals this movie, and is a joy to watch, her facial expressions are hilarious, and really draw you in to liking the character, in fact every performance in this movie is good, and whoever put the cast together deserves a 'well done' for a brilliant ensemble troop of players. If i have one slight criticism then it is that the Mob are about as threatening as a box of kittens! They are depicted as a bunch of fat guys sitting around playing cards and making rice balls, but the guy at the back of the club who seems to know where everybody is, made me laugh out loud. This movie deserves to be up there with some of the greats of the mobster movies. There is also a great soundtrack.

It's 1991 NYC. Rosie (Nina Arianda) and Tommy Uva (Michael Pitt) are small time stick up armed robbers. They get caught robbing a florist. After 18 months, Rosie is working at debt collecting. He gets released from jail and she gets him a job at the agency. Tommy comes up with an idea to rob mafia social clubs which doesn't allow guns inside and everybody has lots of cash. He has issues with the mob getting rough with his father. Mob boss Big Al (Andy García) doesn't want to kill them with all the heat. Then they hit a joint that is being monitored by FBI Agent Frank Hurd (Frank Whaley).

This is a quirky little Bonnie and Clyde story. The acting is pretty good and the story is sort of interesting. The main thing missing is some intensity. Raymond De Felitta doesn't have the intense directing style. He's more of a quirky family drama guy. The couple has a few fun moments. The rest of the movie needs to be either much more funny or much more intense. Part of the problem is the lack of energetic music. This movie should have lots of fun period music. It could be a hilarious comedy or a dark intense period piece. This isn't much of either.

And by saying you're good, you're probably better than any of the characters involved. It's one of those things that "real-life" stories have issues with. It's tough to find anyone sympathetic in this one. Characters seem to be on the wrong side most of the times (at least those shown here).

While I wasn't familiar of the story itself and there might have been a couple of changes to make it more interesting for the general viewing public, this still has some very tough things to say. And as another reviewer already mentioned, do not think or put this near any Scorsese movies. The actors have a great time and it's nice seeing some of them, even if you could argue some are pigeonholed.

This film follows a very innovative narrative scheme. Its author (Jonathan Fernandez) chose to make destiny play the main role instead than suspense: doing nothing to hide how the story will end he let the audience taste how does it feel to live without worrying about your fate.

The result is a somehow less exciting but a far more gentle movie compared to average crime films. There is no blood in this movie, no fear, (almost) no violence and (almost) none gets killed. And godfather's very last message to his grandson is that what really matters in life is love.

An interesting movie. People expecting the common mob movie could be somehow disappointed.