Word: gangsters
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...famous 1957 essay, "Underground Films," Manny argued that "the true masters of the male action film - such soldier-cowboy-gangster directors as Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, William Wellman, William Keighley, the early, pre-Stagecoach John Ford, Anthony Mann" - deserved a higher place in the cinema canon than the big-theme directors who won Oscars and the praise of mainstream reviewers. He praised Hawks especially "because he shows a maximum speed, inner life, and view, with the least amount of flat foot." Manny's celebration of action directors took a while to kick in - it had to be doubled or seconded...
...Eric Roberts) they can handle, with the help of stalwart police lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman). But the Joker - this guy is nuts. He does deals with the Mob, then crosses them up. He makes a point with his pencil by ramming it into a gangster's head. "This town," he says, "deserves a better class of criminals." So do action movies, and here he is, vowing to bring down Batman and Dent, just...
...style of this long, solidly acted film is no more than efficient. What sticks in the mind is the numbing information imparted: that the Camorra is a gangster empire that earned 150 billion Euros just last year; that in addition to dealing in drugs and arms it invests in legitimate businesses around the world, including the reconstruction of the World Trade Center; that in the past three decades the Camorra has murdered more people than al Qaeda. It is these statistics, rather than the movie's ordinary craft, that hold the real power and horror of Gomorrah...
...communist power, the Wild East was no place for faint hearts. Artyom Tarasov, one of Russia's first post-communist millionaires, recalled how quickly business disputes could turn into something much nastier when he described an incident from 1992 at the Club Volodya Cemago in Moscow. "A number of gangsters turned up that day with a clear mission: extract several million dollars from me or, failing that, kidnap me," he said. A veritable army then emerged from both sides - 30 to 40 men. "Given that all were armed to the teeth, it was only a matter of minutes before they...
Consider the reason given at yesterday's briefing in Washington for the North's motivation in helping Syria build a reactor: "Cash," said a CIA official. The North is a gangster state. It earns hard currency anyway it can-including selling weapons and its expertise in producing them. The point of the diplomacy is give Kim sufficient incentives-both economic and diplomatic-to get to a point where he and his regime don't need to do that anymore to survive. A return to what used to be called, in the early years of the Bush Administration, a "strangulation" strategy...