Chicago Overcoat

I liked the story line and the tommy gun action but the rest of he film was a boring mess of obscenities and dumb stupidities!

The hitman dropped guns full of fingerprints and the acting was over the top Italian gangster mumble talk.

Cops made so many mistakes around the gunmen they deserved to die. Running straight into a room where a gunman may be.

Final shootout has the hitman swing round with a gun when any good cop would have stepped back and to the side ready for such a thing and put two bullets into him!

What baffled me was why are the streets, bars and restaurants so empty!

I'll not bother watching it again.

The action scenes were better than expected but surely not so realistic. Only the main actors have any agency.

I was living in Chicago when much of this was filmed. This is true life, forget "fake reality TV", this is the real deal. The main star grows on you, you can empathize and feel what he is feeling, although you might not choose his route! Point is, when I finished watching, early in the morning, I thought, "Wow, this is a great movie". Gritty, real in the mob life, the drug life, the police life, and politics. Here you have a criminal, a former hit-man, and he has needs, to care for his family, to hold his rep, to be cared for. The ending was I surprise. I won't spoil, just watch the movie!

I cannot recall another movie of this type where the protagonist, an elderly mafia hit-man,comes across as one of the better individuals we encounter. And this impression manages to persist despite the multiple crimes we see him commit. Basically he's a bad guy doing bad things to bad people for a good reason. The scenes between Dannny Goldring as the burnt-out cop on the verge of retirement and Frank Vincent as the washed-up hit-man, two has-beens on opposite sides of the law, were especially well done. Solid performances by all the cast, especially Mike Starr as repulsive Mafia Boss Lorenzo Galante. Incidentally both Frank Vincent and Mike Starr appeared in Goodfellas. Personally I find this lower-key movie the better of the two. For some reason this movie seems to have been completely overlooked, perhaps the absence of moral blacks-and-whites put reviewers off. But if you like the genre you will enjoy this one.

While this story isn't breaking any new ground, it is something of a surprise. The writing feels adequate and nothing seems awkward in the telling of this mediocre screenplay, but it is definitely Frank Vincent who carries this movie on his back. Frank plays Lou Marazano, an aging enforcer for a Chicago crime family who finds himself needing to help his divorced daughter and grandson. To help them out, he takes on a few important contracts which the head of the family, Lorenzo Galante (played by Armand Assante) puts on 3 persons who have first hand knowledge of his past crimes. If this knowledge gets in the hands of the Feds, Galante would go away for a long time.

The cast does an amazing job and the direction pulls things together nicely. Everything considered, the performances make this run of the mill story engaging and dramatic.

If you are like me and enjoy mafia stories, you will probably like this. If not, you will probably find this movie mundane.