Mobsters **

After he won his only Oscar in 1951, Humphrey Bogart "joked" that the only way to judge actors is to have the five nominees take on Hamlet and then decide. I put joked in quotes since he did have a flippant tone while making the coment, as he usually did, but there is some truth to what The Man said.

The art of acting really isn't important or at least anywhere near as important as casting. For example, Ernie Borgnine, who couldn't act his way out of a cracked paper mache, has not only made a nice living for decades in the business, but he actually won an Oscar. Why? Because he was always cast well. Ernie does lovable schlubs and sadistic heavies as well as anyone. Why reinvent the wheel?

The one way you can tell if a movie is truly great is if you can't picture anyone one else in the lead roles. You're a director assigned to remake Casablanca. Who's Rick Blaine? That is not only a tribute to Bogart, but the casting director. Bogart used the analogy of five actors playing Hamlet. Well, I'll turn that around. The best Hamlet I've ever seen was Olivier. How do you think Lord Larry would do if given a shot at Sam Spade? I don't care how good the actor is, if he's miscast, it's not going to work. Don't believe me. Go check out Lord Larry in the Jazz Singer.
I was thinking of all this when I started to watch this modern day movie call Mobsters. Chris Penn was up here describing the plot to me and I thought it was a great idea for a movie and decided to check it out. To go one step further, I'm shocked that this movie hasn't been done before.

The basic story is the steps leading to the Castellammarese Gang War in New York resulting in the establishment of the Commission and New York's Five Families. You want to talk about great characters? How's Charles Luciano, Benjamin Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Arnold Rothstein, Frank Costello for starters?

I started to get a strange feeling in my stomach when I saw that the movie starred Patrick Dempsey and Christian Slater. I'm not personally offended by the talents of either actor, but in my mind's eye, they seemed to lack some...what's the word...gravitas.

But I got past that. It wasn't until I saw the credits roll when I got really annoyed.
We'll call this James' Movie Rule #23. There are certain actors, no matter how big the roll, that all movie-goers should know will be in there before they drop down the cabbage. People like Jerry Lewis, that guy with the bug-eyes in all of Mel Brooks's movies, Tippy Hedren, Steven Segal, Doris Day, Gena Lee Nolan, Richard Chamberlain, Dom Deluise all need to be put at the top of the billboard as a flashing warning signal to stay away. If the producers don't like this, then don't cast these people. At the top of this list is Richard Grieco, so the second I saw that he was portraying Benjamin Siegel, my martini glass went flying toward the screen.

"He's really not that bad," Penn told me. I didn't bother answering him.

Anyone who spent any time in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s and knew some movie stars spent some time with Benjamin Siegel. I didn't know Ben well, but I knew him enough to say "hello." I also knew him enough to never call him by that nickname. I won't even write it. Ben has been dead for over fifty years and he's still not dead enough for me to dare call him by that nickname.

This guy did not intimidate by size. He intimidated because you were afraid of him and he wasn't afraid of you and you both knew it. He was nuts. Between us, mind you. He had this look in his eyes, even when he was in a good mood, that said that he would rip you head off at any moment. I meant that literally. Take a switch blade. Take your head off.

And of course I was right, Grieco couldn't pull it off. He emphasized the playboy aspects of his personality, which was there, but that wasn't what defined him. The guy was barking mad; that's what defined him.

The rest of the crew did a noble job. Dempsey did not embarrass himself as Lansky. Slater was kind of feeling it here as Lucky. F. Murray Abraham was absolutely superb as Rothstein. He just nailed it. But it wasn't enough.

You can always tell when a actor is doing well when he's paired with a pro like Abraham or Tony Quinn, who is playing one of the mob family bosses. No one here can match up with those two.
I know the mobsters were young back then, but look at it this way. Arnold Rothstein saw something in them back then. Rothstein was the Red Auerbach of the mob world, the man knew talent. There must have been some type of gravitas here to begin with if Arnold recruited them to do his very profitable rum running and it doesn't completely come across.

The movie looks great. The writing is solid. The story is great. But the casting sinks it. We need a remake here.