One of the well made underrated
gangster film and a directorial debut of Robert De Niro. The influence of
mentor Martin Scorsese is visible, the opening of the film reminds me of one of
the great gangster film ‘Goodfellas’. It begins with a nine years old kid who grows up adolescent watching
a gangster mob boss named Sonny close to his neighborhood and got fascinated by
his power. ‘Nobody’s cool than you Sonny’, he tells to himself sitting and
watching him on his stoop. Once he saved Sonny and soon becomes Sonny’s lucky
boy. His upright bus driver father tries to make him out of it but his
friendship with Sonny grows stronger day by day. Sonny wants to keep the boy
away from the shit and but at the same time the boy’s got crush on black girl
and is in the wrong company of some jerk off buddies.
De Niro built slow but intense gangster
drama around the boy’s struggling conscience and choices between the gangster
who told him, ‘working man is a sucker’ and his working class father who told
him, ‘working man is a tough guy’. Along with the drama he also successfully
captured the mood of shifting and swinging sixties with street life of blues
and doo-wop, baseball and boxing ring, cool money, violence, hippy bike riders
and black power and racial confrontations.
Two thumbs up for the cast and
character portrayal, screenplay and dialogues, watch that scene where Sonny is
explaining the young boy about Machiavelli’s ‘availability’. De Niro plays the
concerning working class father and he’s okay in his act and the boy really
looks like De Niro’s real life son. But the most impressive man of the film is
played by Chazz Palminteri as Sonny and he’s the man who penned the screenplay
of the film. If nothing one has to watch the film for his screenplay and act,
must say worthy to watch.
Ratings-8/10
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