Crime, société anonyme

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.

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

During the very late 50s and early 60s, Hollywood made a bunch of real life crime biographies. I am pretty sure this was due to the success of "The Untouchables" on television and, like "The Untouchables", these movies kind of stuck to the facts....sometimes. Well, at least the names were right. But they were very entertaining.

The movie is about a group dubbed 'Murder Inc.". It was a clever creation of the mob...a contract killing organization that could not be connected easily to any of the murders since they simply were doing it for the cash. The film is about some of their activities but is mostly concerned with the government's efforts to prosecute them.

Although this story gives Stuart Whitman and Mai Britt top billing, their parts are really underdeveloped and you never get to know who these people were--especially Whitman's character, Joey Collins. There really is no star in this film...but a few of the hoods come off much better. Folks loved Peter Falk as Abe Reles, one of the most feared hitmen of all time....and he received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for this. David Stewart was also excellent as the gang leader, Lepke.

A few times during the film, the filmmakers pulled their punches--especially concerning Reles. Although it did show him making a few hits using an ice pick, apparently this monster was known for stabbing his victims in the brain with the ice pick. Nice guy, huh?! This didn't bother me too much, as it was perhaps too ghoulish for 1960 audiences. What bothered me more was how the hairstyles (particularly Mai Britt's) were purely 1960...not late 1930s like they should have been.

So is it any good? Yes...it's very watchable but also a tad superficial and I felt after seeing it that there was so much more to the story...which there was. Worth your time...not great but quite good.

How much truth there is in this "true story" with "real people" is a question best left to historians of organized crime. The subplot of Stuart Whitman ("Joey") and May Britt ("Eadie") as a loving couple caught up in nasty doings certainly seems like the stuff of fiction. In any case, this is a low-budget "B" picture with limited resources for portraying the 1930s setting and documenting the historical events with authentic detail.

The one extraordinary element in the movie is the performance by Peter Falk as a contract killer. He is not only completely believable in the role but downright original, giving us a character who is merciless and vicious yet quick to take offense if anyone finds this objectionable. He can sound plaintively sincere even as we quickly come to see that he is incapable of sincerity. He has a host of minor quirks and tics that are fun to watch.

Face it, evil can be fascinating and even attractive, in a disturbing way. Another example in this movie is the portrayal of crime kingpin Louis "Lepke" Bucholter by David J. Stewart. While certainly not achieving the high level of Falk's performance, Stewart shows real style as the milk-drinking mobster.

There is one other bonus in this film: Sarah Vaughan, looking young and pretty, sings a nice song with that inimitable voice.

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.