Review: Mean Streets

Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, a small-time hood (and guilty Catholic) whose irresponsible, volatile pal Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro, giving a Master Class of screen acting) gets him into all sorts of trouble, whilst he runs errands for his crime boss uncle Cesare Danova, who wants him to dump reckless Johnny Boy (who has no concept of personal responsibility whatsoever). But Charlie wants to do right, by his faith, by his uncle, and by his friends. Yeah...probably not going to successfully juggle all three there, Charlie. David Proval is the comparatively easy-going neighbourhood bartender Charlie is buddies with. Richard Romanus believably plays a mid-level (at best!) loan shark whom Johnny Boy is in debt to (admittedly, there are few people in town he’s not in debt to), and who is fast losing patience. Amy Robinson is Johnny Boy’s epileptic cousin whom Charlie becomes involved with, much to Danova’s disapproval (though Danova hates Johnny Boy even more).

 

Authentic, low-budget 1973 Martin Scorsese (“Goodfellas”, “Raging Bull”, “Taxi Driver”, “The Aviator”) slice of two-bit hoodlum life in NYC’s Little Italy gets a major boost from De Niro’s electrifying, scene-stealing performance (one of his best-ever). Keitel is solid, but his character isn’t terribly interesting. Excellent supporting work by a couple of genre veterans Romanus and Proval, too.

 

Scorsese’s incessant overuse of popular music (apparently much lifted from his own record collection like The Rolling Stones and the Ronnettes) is really the only flaw (his one stylistic flourish that proves a little too much) in an otherwise pretty believably depicted, gritty, sometimes funny, sometimes visually spectacular film that helped make the director a much-lauded filmmaker (whose Roger Corman-stable training stands him well here with the low-budget) and was the first in a quite fruitful partnership between Scorsese and De Niro (“Taxi Driver”, “Raging Bull”, “New York, New York”, “The King of Comedy”, “Goodfellas”, “Cape Fear”, “Casino”). Fun cameos by Robert and David Carradine (as a baby-faced killer and drunk, respectively), and the director himself at the film’s violent (and memorable) conclusion.

 

New York gangster movie fans will want to bump the rating up a bit here, most consider it a 5-star affair (and it was probably very new and fresh in its day), I just found it more interesting on the periphery than with Keitel’s rather bland character (Being an atheist meant that the Catholic guilt stuff, so obviously personal and important to Scorsese, didn’t have much resonance with me), and the world depicted isn’t exactly a fascinating one to me, personally. But watching De Niro’s ‘car crash waiting to happen’ act was pretty intense stuff, and whatever its flaws may be, it proves very influential even to this day. A must-see, at the very least.

 

Rating: B