Mobsters *** (1991, Christian Slater, Patrick Dempsey, Richard Grieco, Costas Mandylor, Anthony Quinn, Michael Gambon, F Murray Abraham) – Classic Movie Review 11,289

Director Michael Karbelnikoff’a 1991 thriller Mobsters [Mobsters: The Evil Empire] is a junior-league Godfather, a kind of Young Machine Guns, with Christian Slater as 30s gangster Lucky Luciano out to get rid of (or ‘ice’) a couple of New York City’s finest Mr Bigs, Don Masseria (Anthony Quinn) and Don Faranzano (Michael Gambon).

Mobsters is gripping, violent stuff, and the time whizzes by at a short-running 104 minutes, but trying to interest young teenagers in violent gangsters is perhaps not terribly edifying, and the film never quite reaches the spot inhabited by its more illustrious Godfather predecessors.

Slater has the whole picture more or less to himself, with the other young actors making little impression as his partners in crime, though there are scene-stealing star cameos from Gambon, Quinn and F Murray Abraham (as Arnold Rothstein) as the old mobsters, as well as Nicholas Sadler as the psychotic Mad Dog Coll. The cinematography by Lajos Koltai and the production design by Richard Sylbert are outstanding, adding to an impeccably made movie.

The screenplay is by Michael Mahern and Nicholas Kazan, from a story by Michael Mahern.

Also in the cast are Richard Grieco as Bugsy Siegel, Costas Mandylor, Lara Flynn Boyle, Christopher Penn, Joe Viterelli, Rodney Eastman, Andy Romano, and Titus Welliver as Al Capone.

It cost a lot, at $23,000,000, and fared moderately, taking $20,246,790 in the US.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,289

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