Word: gangsters
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...life was not a model of underworld career management, it was a commercial moviemaker's dream. To begin with, his passion for upward mobility inevitably brings up the tragic gangster heroes of cinema history -those overreaching Little Caesars whose dreams of success were so satisfyingly animated by the likes of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney...
...short, there is a little something for everybody in Crazy Joe - except those who insist on at least routine cinematic competence even in gangster movies. With Peter Boyle in the title role, and Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Charlie Cioffi and Luther Adler as supporting hoods, there is a fair amount of acting ability on hand, but each man seems to be working in a minimovie all his own. Director Lizzani is unable to find in Carlino's ripped-off script a solid tempo from which the actors might take a common beat. As a result, Crazy Joe never lives...
Cagney is coming back. He's going to be on TV soon, after a long period of seclusion. The Public Enemy was one of two films that burst out in 1931 to start a tradition of gangster films. Cagney (with his grapefruit) tries to be tough. But the film shows his family, too, and the final scene when he returns home is always moving, no matter how many times you've seen the movie...
John Boorman is always after something new. Much of his work (Having a Wild Weekend, Deliverance) has been a remolding of traditional genres-the musical or adventure film-to suit a more personal, sometimes dour vision. For example, he and Screenwriter Alexander Jacobs transformed Point Blank from an ordinary gangster-revenge story into an essay in gun-metal existentialism and a portrait of Southern California absurdism that is still unrivaled. Zardoz, his sixth film, loses something of its predecessors' fighting trim. Although Boorman excels at expressing ideas through action, too many of them, and too muddled, are tossed...
...complicated story--about a mysterious disappearance and a murder case that turn out to be intertwined--is pretty unimportant. What matters most is the cavalcade of bizarre characters that parade through the movie: a wasted, would-be Hemingway, his mysterious wife, a nonchalant killer, and a sadistic Jewish gangster. The gangster--a shadowy, sinister figure in so many films--is laughably absurd in this movie because he's so exaggerated. His idea of getting down to the bare essentials is stripping down to his dark blue jockey-shorts, so he can talk as a man with nothing to hide...