Comment

Jul 27, 2017white_cobra_21 rated this title 1.5 out of 5 stars
Why oh why did not listen to the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes and steer clear of this? The overall plot was of some interest. However, it was befallen by two things, and they both fall under arrogance by the film-makers. The film is unnecessarily long, much of it caused by long, drawn out shots that are usually somewhat beautiful, but are incredibly boring and even irritating when found in the middle of what should have been a taught mob film. The second is the film-makers' desperate attempt to add dialogue to address racism and xenophobia. At least two different times if felt like one of the mob bosses - obviously deplorably human beings - lectures another corrupt and evil person on their hope that racism and xenophobia will one day cause them to receive their comeuppance. The came across to me as what could have been an 80 minutes taught mob thriller, with nearly 50 minutes of lingering cinematography and campaign speeches. It really ruined the movie. If the movie was, at its heart, about the racial tensions between the Italian and Cuban criminals and the KKK, or even between the Irish who worked with the Italian mobsters - that could have potentially been a compelling movie - but the heart of the movie was about a man who was perhaps too good to be a mob boss, and whether raising up in the ranks would ruin his character - with campaign speeches that seemed to come out of nowhere added to it. The director (Ben Affleck) did not have the cruelty as a director to choose which movie they were making, and cut the other parts of it out. As a result, we have a jumbled mess that failed at telling either story.