Product: Mean Streets (1973)
Rating: 5.0
One Mean Movie
Mean Streets is the movie that broke out the careers of director Martin Scorcese and Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro. The film set the mold for the directorial style that Mr. Scorcese would follow the rest of his career; including the goodfella plotline and heavy doses of doo wop music, early 60's rock & r&b. The story centers around Charlie, who is a low level mobster. He doesn't have alot of rank and privilege, but the guys in the neighborhood always seem to come to them with their problems. Charlie is quite religious and despite his shady career, he is a nice guy. He keeps his relationship with his epileptic girlfriend Theresa a secret and he is constantly putting out fires started by her cousin and his best friend Johnny-Boy. Johnny is a loose cannon who in debt big time to a local loan shark. The movie ends in a rush of gunfire and crashing cars. Mr. Scorcese does a magnificent job of conveying the day-to-day life of guys in Little Italy. The film has a definite personal touch and you can image that these were the guys he knew from his neighborhood. Mr. Keitel is Charlie and he does a great job of portraying him as a man with all the weight of the world on his shoulders. Even though Mr. Keitel has the lead role and is in just about every scene, the real star of the film is Mr. DeNiro as Johnny-Boy. He explodes off the screen with a fiery, over the top performance. The movie showed that he would be an actor to be reckoned with and Mr. Scorcese would be a directorial force.