A post-modern gangster flick!

Rating: 9/10 (8 November 2019)

What's interesting is what Martin Scorsese said about adapting Nicholas Pigleggi's book: if they concentrated the scenes and the timelines together, "the effect would be terrific." Here, what you're dealing with is what's scattered around the country -- boring, Franki Valli records and card games and formal attire -- jam-packed together in a way you could see there's some vitality to, and how. For once, the motives propelling all these cultural impulses -- what else can I say? -- like Henny Youngman have their backbone revealed, the electricity behind putting all these things out there: The pleasure of running thing. "Just like they did in the old country ... " Right.
So, here's most of America -- the kind that got made fun of in "The Simpsons," because everyone had gotten sick of it -- pulled together by the guy Manny Farber says, like Terrence Malick in "Badlands," did with his "Mean Streets" a reflection of how people live nowadays with postcards, home movies, and other filtered media. There's so much on display, so much in the participatory background, that was consciously chosen by Scorsese, that you could hardly pay attention to it all -- even the TV show Karen's watching when she lets the agents in to search her home ("She spit on her own floor! Why would anyone *do* that? I figure it was just easier to be polite!") seems put there on purpose.
And the rest of us are schnooks ... "ordering pasta and getting egg noodles with ketchup." Scorsese lets us in on the backstory, and all hell breaks loose. And the world would never be the same.