Daddy Leone

Rating: 9/10 (31 August 2009)

Now what are the main assets of daddy Leone's gangster epic? The mere beauty of so much in this movie—frames, faces, encounters, scenes, lines, places, tears, the vertiginous spiral of the misdeeds, rapes, then the fatigue and the exhaustion of a tamed oldster; the raw vitality; in a single breath—the awesome photography, engrossing music and golden performances from an impossibly fine cast, as only such gangster epics are set to gather; the crude and violent sexuality; the forceful epic sweep; the sharp naturalism and the frankness, the brutality and the richness and depth of the factual and psychological material; and a Neanderthalian as a leading character, De Niro in a persona he won't put down anymore—the unsubtle, ignominious low—life and street—wise beast . Well here are then at least six such assets that make Leone's epic such a mind—bending movie and experience; I mean this is the only Leone movie—and one of the few American movies—to be EXPERIENCED.
Intentionally, De Niro's character spends the almost entire movie as a soulless, insensitive, two—dimensional, heinous and mean thug. He's not glamorized—he's not glamorized as Scorsese will glamorize basically the same raw and two—dimensional persona in CASINO. Leone films a gallery of crudely self—assertive beasts; De Niro's character spends all his youth and mature age being the same street—wise egoist jerk, unable of a drip of humanity. As in the best of Balzac, the change comes in circumstances UN-narrated and perhaps prosaic, outside the narration, in a discontinuity of the narration, and perhaps it isn't a bettering or an improvement but simply the crushing exhaustion brought by life. Noodles is not a hero; he's a thug, an animal, mindless brute—the root of everything De Niro will go on being in movies—Cady and the others . (Please join me in discouraging spellings like DeNiro, Scorcese, S--p--e--i--l--b--e--r--g, etc..)