Word: gangsterisms
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...gangster drama, Kingpin (Sundays and Tuesdays, 10 p.m. E.T., debuting Feb. 2), takes a lot of supposed risks: its depiction of drug use, its heavy violence and its protagonist, a Mexican crime lord shipping coke and crystal meth to American kids. But its greatest liability may be today's yes-you-can-do-that-on-TV culture. In the wake of R-rated, critically acclaimed and successful cable shows like HBO's The Sopranos and FX's The Shield, network TV has found audiences increasingly blase about sex and violence. This season Jack Bauer killed and decapitated a prisoner...
...dirty secret of Kingpin is that in the episodes sent to critics, its language and violence are not much more explicit than what we've already seen on network TV. An attention-getting moment in the pilot--a gangster feeds a human leg to his pet tiger--is no more graphic than many scenes in CSI; there is fleeting partial nudity, but sadly for anyone hoping for a reprise of the Bada Bing club, it's an old man exposing a hint of pubic hair. The real risk it takes is that, like The Sopranos, Kingpin puts bad guys front...
...landlord. Dugdale, who was sentenced to 11 years in jail, now works in Dublin with a support group for former prisoners. She refuses to discuss the robbery, which made her a household name in Ireland. If Rose Dugdale seemed a character out of a B-movie, the next gangster to target Russborough House actually inspired two feature films about his life and crimes. Dublin crime boss Martin Cahill - a.k.a. the General - had the posthumous privilege of being portrayed by Academy Award winner Kevin Spacey in the thinly fictionalized Ordinary Decent Criminal, released in 2000. (Two years earlier, Brendan Gleeson played...
This time, the now-incarcerated gangster Paul Vitti fakes insanity to get himself released from jail and into the custody of Ben Sobel. Sobel, of course, has problems of his own to contend with, including the recent death of his father. Putting the two together again can only mean trouble. And, of course, a great premise for a sequel...
...That different from This? Like many a reformed gangster, Vitti wants to go legit. With the help of Sobel, he tries his hand at various jobs, as a car salesman (“Look at the size of that trunk. You could put three bodies in there”), a jewelry store employee, and as a “technical advisor” on a new gangster movie. Needless to say, these attempts at legitimacy don’t work out as planned. Sobel’s wife Laura (Lisa Kudrow) doesn’t feel particularly hospitable towards mobsters...