Good, slightly long but probably realistic

Rating: 9/10 (9 April 2008)

A long film about "Italian" crime in New York in the 1950-1980 period, and a good one at that. It shows the brutality and the extreme male chauvinism of these gangsters who are ready to sell anything, steal anything, kill anyone in order to make money, and as for killing, to satisfy their insatiable thirst for blood, to satisfy their unquenchable hunger for violence. It also shows, rather on the side because it is not the main object, how justice and before it the police are managing their gang-spirit, splitting their unity and getting the weaker ones to become protected witnesses, and it works: these criminals prefer being hidden away by the Justice Department for decades rather than going away in prison for even longer periods of time. The film is well done: Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci are quite acceptable. Ray Liotta on the other hand appears slightly weak when confronted to the other two, and he has to be since he is the side-kick, and an essential one at that, of both of them. One shortcoming though: even if the police managed to more or less bring the Italians back in line, the film is absolutely silent about the fact that the various traffics and particularly drugs were then abandoned to another mafia, probably even more dangerous, i.e. the Blacks and the Porto Ricans and other Latinos.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines