Bugsy

This highly fictionalized account of Ben "Bugsy" Siegal's life looks and sounds great. I wish that films actually made in the 1940s looked this good. The ballroom scenes and the big bands are all perfect, the automobiles long and shiny. When Warren Beatty made a period piece, it usually looked very good, so this was not a surprise.

So Beatty portrays Ben Siegal as a sociopathic gangster whose curse is that he is a dreamer who is careless with money. He somewhat dreams of being in pictures and enjoys the glamor of Hollywood, but ultimately dooms himself when he falls in love with an idea - building a casino in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, where prostitution and gambling are legal. He argues to his mob investors that they can be 100% legitimate. And if they decide to be less than 100% legitimate, he figures controlling the gambling interests in a state where it is legal and at that point - the 1940s - unexploited, he can eventually control the state.

The other decision he makes that dooms himself is getting involved with Virginia Hill (Annette Bening), a kindred spirit in all the wrong ways. They fight violently, make up violently, and she ultimately gets grabby with the mob money that is the construction funds for the Flamingo. This was a very versatile role for Annette Bening as Hill, and is probably the best thing she ever did. She was slated to be Cat Woman in a film the following year, but she managed to do something much more remarkable - actually get Beatty to enter into matrimony - an institution he had skillfully avoided up to that point - in a union that yielded four children. And she also appears to be the model for the Columbia Lady with a Torch - although everybody denies it in spite of Beatty's heavy investment in Sony/Columbia.

Other interesting performances - Ben Kingsley as the low key Meyer Lansky. In spite of being a Best Actor Oscar winner, that honor never really paid off for him in break-out roles. Elliott Gould as the hapless Harry Greenburg. Honestly, you rat on the mob and another member of the mob asks you to go for a ride and you say you love riding in the night air? The underrated Joe Mantagna as just "George". Since "George" was starring in the film "Manpower" that was shooting as Bugsy looks on, that had to be George Raft. Were they afraid the Raft estate would sue, and who exactly is the Raft estate since Raft never had any kids?

Finally, not so much an interesting performance but an interesting vignette - Bugsy walks up to singer/actor Lawrence Tibbett's house and pays him sixty thousand in cash for it. Like so much of the movie, this never happened. But Tibbett's kids did object to the portrayal of their dad as a short elderly overweight wimpy guy. But somehow, the film makers were NOT afraid of the Tibbett estate!

The one thing that annoyed me about this film - the score by Ennio Morricone. It never breaks out into any particular kind of mood, and it sounds enough like one of Morricone's other scores - the one for The Untouchables - that it sounds like if it were to take off it would sound exactly like that score.

After staying at the Las Vegas Flamingo, and spending a substantial amount of time browsing through the artifacts of old Vegas at the Las Vegas History Museum at the Tropicana Hotel, this is one movie I wanted to watch when I got back. Not that I'm a fan of Warren Beatty (I only watched his Dick Tracy movie), but I'm interested in the Hollywood retelling of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel's story.

For the uninitiated, Siegel was a gangster, who loves his family, but is as horny as he can get. He falls in love with the Hollywood glamour and life, and comes to know his new mistress, a starlet called Virginia Hill (Annette Bening), who's known in some circles as the village bicycle - everyone's had a ride.

Seigel shares a love-hate relationship with Hill, and it is always bumpy. And little does he know that this love will ultimately cause his downfall and demise. Love aside, there's also plenty of scenes that shows Siegel's violent nature (hey, he's a gangster), and scenes too that highlights his disregard for money - he spends lavishly. There's a subplot about Mussolini too, which highlights Seigel's eccentricity.

But he does have a vision, and that was having the foresight of predicting how Las Vegas would become as important as can be, with the erection of the Hoover Dam to provide it with electricity. He's the one with the vision of creating something in the middle of the desert, which we know today as the Strip, with casinos, hotels, and entertainment from class acts. His vision started off as The Flamingo hotel, which over blew its budget by almost 5 million dollars (at that time). Of course, when you're dealing with mob money, you'd better be careful, as they become impatient with his grander vision of controlling a casino, city, state, and ultimately having the power to influence presidential elections.

Directed by Barry Levinson, Bugsy is the tale of that one man's vision. It's well acted, with a superb supporting cast. Keeping true to the finale, watch out for that flying eye too. And yes, Beatty and Bening met on set, and married thereafter.

Sadly, this Code 1 DVD contains no special extras.

Bugsy is a typical gangster/mob movie; it has got the wise guys, the families, the family problems, and a tragic flaw in the protagonist. It is also 2 1/2 hours long, which you should expect with any biopic anyway, but I think it can get a little tedious in some areas. First off, Warren Beatty is brilliant, and there is no question in my mind that it was anything less than perfection. His supporting cast's performances were excellent as well including those of Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, and Annette Bening. The film probably deserved all the Oscar nominations it received, but, with the exceptions of Beatty's performance and a couple technical awards, nothing deserved the Oscar. However, I do not want to give a bad impression of this film because it does deserve some approbation.

The story of Bugsy Siegel is indeed a true story. Siegel was a New York Jewish gangster, who moved out to L.A., and one thing led to another and resulted in Bugsy building the Flamingo hotel and casino in the middle of the desert. This is the man who put Las Vegas on the map. Bugsy (by the way, don't call him Bugsy to face) is very insane. Also, Kingsley's character gets to introduce Bugsy's tragic flaw: he doesn't "respect" money. This combination makes one very unique mobster that I can not compare to any other. Just wait for the scene relating to dogs and pigs; I don't want to reveal anymore because this is where Beatty shines.

Virginia Hill (Bening) is a cookie cutter actress going steady with one of Siegel's or somebody else's soldiers. Bugsy starts to look fondly on her, and thus starts the romance. There should be no surprise whatsoever since they're married in real life, but Beatty and Bening do have great chemistry on screen. Their relationship brings out a lot of fun in the film.

Again, Bugsy is a tragedy. I don't think that's spoiling it since you can learn that somewhere on the Internet, but I do want to let you know what you're getting into. It is a very interesting story with a few laughs and some irony here and there. Barry Levinson made a well-constructed film that flows very nicely and only lacks where I assume the screenplay does. I would not say it is at the caliber of Goodfellas or The Godfather Trilogy, but, all in all, it is a pretty decent movie.

I highly recommend that you definitely see it.

A big elegant movie, beautiful in every sense of the word, a fascinating story of the man who created Las Vegas and Warren Beatty is perfect in this movie. If you're not a huge fan of his, as I am not, you'll still appreciate the great talents of this star who is not necessarily known for his acting prowess. He is a joy to watch with the gorgeous Annette Bening Beatty. They have a great chemistry and all the actors involved were fantastic, there were many oscar nominations for all aspects of this film, acting, costumes, best film, best director, but when I saw that that Elliott Gould was not nominated for his wonderfully moving performance as Harry Greenberg, I was very surprised. Maybe it was just too small of a role. But it's a movie to be savoured and worth seeing on DVD, if anything just to appreciate the stunning photography.

One of the major knocks against this film when it was released was the amount of unfaithfulness to the truth throughout the movie.

Despite many liberties taken against the historical record of what occurred and a number or made-up scenes that are hard to fathom, the movies tries at times to follow close to what was known at the time but the lack of attention to detail keeps getting in the way.

Beatty does a great job acting in the film and his chemistry with his future wife Annette Bening is something to behold.

I don't mind so much that Beatty is about 15 years older than Siegel was during these years but it's more upsetting that Virginia Hill (Benings character) is portrayed as a street tough city girl when she was a street tough country girl from Alabama.

Mickey Cohen was in his early 30s but is portrayed as a hardened criminal in his late 40s to early 50s. Also the background story on his relationship with Siegel is tangled up here.

The movie does drag on at times and there are some absurd scenes which never would have happened.

Beatty is at his best playing the family man - his charisma carries the picture but they couldn't even get the ending to be accurate historically which kind of defeats the purpose of making a biopic movie.