The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight
Take a glance at the credits and you'll see that director James Goldstone's 1971 comedyThe Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straightis the work of some mighty impressive names. Screenwriter Waldo Salt had already won an Oscar forMidnight Cowboy, and would go on to writeComing HomeandSerpico. Jimmy Breslin, upon whose book the movie is based, was a celebrated New York newspaper columnist. The cast includes a young Robert DeNiro, Jerry Orbach (decades before being unforgettably cast as Det. Lennie Briscoe inLaw & Order), film veteran Lionel Stander, the very appealing Leigh Taylor-Young, and even Herve Villechaize (yes, Tattoo fromFantasy Island, except here his every line of dialogue has been dubbed by someone without an accent). Unfortunately, the film is decidedly less than the sum of its parts. The cast acquits itself adequately, notwithstanding some heavy-handed stereotypes (Jo Van Fleet, as the Orbach character's knife-happy mama, wears out her welcome early in the first reel). But Goldstone's background was mostly in television, and he handles the film with a heavy hand more suited to a bad sit-com. The story, such as it is, concerns the efforts of the hapless Kid Sally Palumbo (Orbach) and his dumb cronies to usurp mob boss Baccala's (Stander) power. Sally and his gang are inept--it's they, not Baccala, who keep getting knocked off--but not as lame as the movie, which relies on obvious gags, poorly-timed physical shtick, and an unconvincing romance between DeNiro's Italian bike racer-con man and Taylor-Young's Angela (as Sally's sister, although she's about as Italian as Mary Tyler Moore). Some of the bits are amusing, especially those featuring a lion (don't ask) in Sally's charge, but by and large,The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straightis a dull disappointment. The DVD includes no bonus material.--Sam Graham