Same old story: weak storyline held up by great acting

Rating: 4/10 (17 October 2006)

Scorsese fans probably won't be disappointed by this Boston Irish gangster movie, alas, the storyline really isn't up to par. The principle actors make this movie far better than it has a right to be, (that's what one expects good actors to do for just about any film). The plot line seems muddled. There seems to be a lack of motivation for anyone to do anything except beat the crap out of each other, swear, and shoot people for the hell of it. Several principle actors manage to live through moments they should have been killed only to wind up dying later on. Whomever wrote the screenplay seems to have a serious fetish for depicting people's heads getting blown off. The movie leaves me wondering if I'm supposed to see it as just another rip-off of every modern mobster movie since Goodfellas, or if I'm supposed to just embrace that emptiness of not knowing what the point of the movie really was.