The Wannabe

If you can accept Patricia Arquette as a New Yorker with a Brooklyn brogue, you might enjoy this slow-moving look at a couple of losers who decide to rob the Mob. There was nothing new here. If you saw Rob the Mob a year earlier then you have already seen this film. The difference is Rob the Mob was more of a dark-humored comedy, and The Wannabe is dead serious. Too serious to be exact. I couldn't sympathize with the leads one bit.

Even though the actors in The Wannabe are better known then in another movie Rob the Mob this one isn't better then Rob the Mob. Both movies are based on the same true story so you would think the facts are about the same, but it wasn't really. I found that strange. Why would the facts not be the same if it's based on a true story? Anyways, I scored Rob the Mob a seven star rating, and because I think that movie was way better then The Wannabe I score this one only a 6 star rating. It's not that it's not worth a watch but if you have the choice then I would watch Rob the Mob instead. The Wannabe is much slower and not that interesting. Well that's what I think about it.

This is a well-done film about a couple of petty criminals (not too bright) that end up robbing social club card games, supposedly to get money so they can move to Hawaii. It's well-acted; a good character study. It's based on the lives of Thomas and Rosemarie Uva, whose spree started in 1991 and ended in December 1992. Another director did the same story as the movie, Rob the Mob.

It does not get more blue collar than The Wannabe, a no trills mob movie about a Mob geeks obsession with the John Gotti trails of the early 90s.

Vincent Piazza plays the mob geek, Thomas. his performance in the movie was pretty well done. His psychotic nature just kept escalating as the movie progressed which made him entertaining to focus on.

Also like the performance of Patricia Arquette, who played Thomas' equally touched girlfriend, Rose. I felt a certain dignity to her performance that made you feel sorry for Rose instead of sad.

Overall the movie was a very disturbing tale of Thomas and Rose, a weird version of Bonnie and Clyde, in a movie that feels like a low rate version of Taxi Driver.

A decent indi film to look at.

This was a puzzle. The film based on the true story of Tommy Uva and Rosie DeToma who decided to rob the mafia in their own drinking dens in the early 90s. He was 28. She was 31. Yet in the film the actor Vincent Piazza playing Tommy is 39 and Patricia Arquette - looking a bit like a glamorous grannie / mature Chrissy Hind - is 47! Too old to play a couple of naive wannabe Bonnie and Clyde's in thrall to mafia boss John Gotti.

After a slow start the robberies suddenly spew out as if on fast forward as Tommy gets addicted to drugs and the hand held camera is flying all over the place.

Rob the Mob (2014) played the same story for laughs. This film fell a bit flat but has a slight twist in the ending as if she knew what was coming.