Word: underworlders
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Coppola is clearly at pains to make some of the points he made in The Godfather I again: that the underworld is a business organization; that there are ethnic divisions in it between Jewish mobsters in Miami Beach and Italian ones in Las Vegas; that the distaff side of the family is protected from the unpleasant side of the business; that everyone--including the Godfather--lives in constant danger of sudden death; that the protective function of the Sicilian mafia was not wholly lost in America. But he introduces some new themes as well: the struggle for legitimacy (Michael opens...
Neither of Coppola's two Godfathers could be accused of making the underworld life seem attractive, and Michael is even less romanticized than his father. Vito's world was a community where, if he walked down he street in New York's Little Italy, dapper old men and peasant-faced old women would how to him and kiss his hand. Even Michael's own lieutenants in New York would probably be unable to recognize him, his empire grown so large that his isolation at the top is unavoidable...
...stage play turned into a too-cute (and what's worse for a mystery, too easy to figure out) movie: The Last of Sheila and Klute derive their chief interest not so much from their plots as from their settings, an ocean-liner studded with Hollywood stars and the underworld of an urban prostitute. The Long Goodbye tries to take on the whole tradition and do something with the self-consciousness that deliberate manipulation of the audience's expectations allows. The result, inexplicably, was boring...
...economic necessity. Godfather to rip-off artists ranging from truck hijackers to snatch-and-grab junkies, the fence buys their "swag" (stolen goods) for a fraction of its value and unloads it swiftly at slightly below wholesale to respectable folks eager for a bargain. Though he is the underworld's most visible agent, the fence has generally escaped the scrutiny of journalists, cameras and sociologists. Until recently, that is. In The Professional Fence (Free Press; $8.95), Sociologist Carl B. Klockars offers the latest word on the ancient practice of selling filched goods by introducing the reader to a true...
...stark evil in this plan quickly flowers into nightmare. Two hoodlums pick up Hicks' trail the moment he arrives in Berkeley. He and Marge escape with the heroin, but when Converse gets home he walks into a trap. The thugs are not, as it happens, emissaries from the underworld but something worse: agents for a corrupt federal officer, bent on picking off the heroin for himself before staging a phony drug bust on Converse and his accomplices. The chase that follows is unforgettable...