An honest opinion - Not a bad movie, but seriously flawed

Rating: 6/10 (20 April 2005)

First off, I don't write reviews... Secondly I don't agree in general with 1/10 or 10/10 as either extreme is effectively unattainable in my opinion (what is a "10/10" in the 50's if released in 2k is NOT "10/10" - to be explained later)...
I picked out this movie (extended version)one night from a blockbuster, and seem to have vaguely recalled hearing about it. So I popped it in, started watching it, and was soon thereafter asleep.
So the next day I looked up the reviews on here, and to my surprise this thing (that quickly put me to sleep) was on the top 250!!! I was shocked. People were comparing it to The Godfather and Goodfellas... OMG...
So I sat down a few nights later and decided to re-visit this thing which I thought could not be anywhere near as good as people were saying... To my surprise, things go a lot better after a while... the story just started off too slow.
The story was interesting (once it got going), and ultimately the overall story was good.
Some of the cinematography was quite good, some was painfully awful... it was as though there were different people controlling/editing the shots at different times.
I don't know what was in the original version and the extended cut, however there was too much sex related scenes for my likings. I think sex has its place in movies, it just that this movie had a little too much (or too long), with some scenes on the boarder of turning into a porno. And when I'm watching a gangster/mafia movie, I don't want it to kick into a little porno action, I want to see the stereotypical gangster related things  drug trafficking, extortion, gambling, murder blah blah blah... not, common baby, lets see if you can tell which one of us mobsters had their way with you a while ago by a careful assessment of our 'weapons' while we look on grinning stupidly. Just didn't seem appropriate.
I think the acting was top notch - I can't think of a single actor/actress that did a bad job; the flaws are more in the direction the movie was shot/edited.
I think if this movie was released in say 1960, it would have gotten an 8/10 from me... but this was 1984, Nineteen EIGHTY-FOUR... post godfather... I find that movies over time end up raising the bar for other movies, and that sloppy cinematography or acting or direction becomes less tolerated - because movie makers should know by now that everything has to be firing on all cylinders to be a top movie (relatively speaking of course).
It should have been better.
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