The Worst Film Ever

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's 1935 NYC. Dutch Schultz (Dustin Hoffman) has Bo Weinberg (Bruce Willis) tied up. The movie flashes back to hustler Billy Bathgate (Loren Dean) on the streets. He ingratiates himself into Dutch's grace with his timely audacity. Dutch is a lead gangster. Otto Berman (Steven Hill) is his second in-command. Bo is his master fixer who can be trusted to do anything. Drew Preston (Nicole Kidman) is Bo's married girlfriend. Dutch is battling another gang as he grows suspicious of Bo. After Dutch kills Bo, he takes Drew as his. He has a trial in upstate New York and tries to win over the locals with his generosity.There is something off-putting about Loren Dean portrayal of Billy Bathgate. He's a wide-eyed bland puppy who's always hanging around and listening. He lacks the needed intensity to lead a movie that has Dustin Hoffman acting up a storm. I imagine a modern version could be played by Eddie Redmayne who would give this role much needed energy. With Kidman bringing all of her damaged sexuality, Loren Dean brings the heat of a 12 year old boy. It's partly the character but mostly it's left on Loren's doorstep. How much of it is director Robert Benton's doing is hard to tell. This movie should be a lot better with so many great supporting actors involved.

While hanging out with friends in 1935 New York City, Prohibition-era poor Loren Dean (as Billy "Bathgate" Behan) notices notorious gangster Dustin Hoffman (as Arthur "Dutch Schwartz" Flegenheimer) doing his dirty work. After admiring Mr. Dean's ability to juggle four balls, Mr. Hoffman gives the younger man a job with the mob. Dean begins by sweeping the floor, but is quickly promoted to keeping smoking hot girlfriend Nicole Kidman (as Drew) satisfied under the sheets...One of the problems with "Billy Bathgate" is that Dean appears as a fully grown man who is being treated, and often acts, like he's a 14-year-old kid. Sometimes he is made to appear shorter and younger, but it's really a lost cause. Consequently, the scenes with Dean and the other men seem silly. And, even on his own, top-billed Hoffman's character registers nothing but ugly.Dean is more convincing with Ms. Kidman, who has a brief "full frontal" moment after a swim. A highlight is the "Saratoga" horse-racing sequence, with Dean, Kidman and Steve Buscemi (as Irving). Kidman has a husband (Xander Berkeley) who likes to unbutton a man's shirt on the couch, and another (Bruce Willis) who gets to try on a pair of Hoffman's cement shoes...***** Billy Bathgate (11/1/91) Robert Benton ~ Loren Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Steven Hill

If there is one thing that strikes you about Billy it is that he is not a killer. He likes the money and the sharp suits and the girls and the party life of being mobbed up. But he doesn't have it in him to look someone in the eye and pull the trigger (Notice how it never occurred to Dutch Schultz to ask Billy to kill Drew. Or even let him in on the plan). Billy is not Henry Hill.Otto Berman, Schultz's money man, the 'consigliere', in the film immediately recognizes that about Billy and takes him under his wing in a mentoring way. He is constantly risking Schultz's psychotic wrath by protecting Billy, telling him more than Schultz means him to know. In the end he saves Billy's life by getting him out of that steak house when he knows that everyone has turned against them and they are doomed.This film denies the viewer the vicarious thrill of reveling in mob movie violence on several counts. One is that Billy is a horrified onlooker to Schultz's violence. Never an active participant. The second is that Schultz's violence is always self-defeating. Prohibition is over and the Jewish Schultz has been reduced to whatever scraps Luciano and the Five Families deign to leave him (protection rackets and the Harlem numbers rackets). He is on the way down. It sure looks as if Luciano is perfectly happy to toss prosecutor Dewey a bone to make him happy and that bone will be Schultz. In the end Schultz's political protection abandons him notwithstanding the offer of a $17,000 bribe (multiply times 20. $340,000. That's a lot of money. After all, the $50 Berman lent Billy covered a new suit, black leather shoes, a new dress for Becky, a present for his Mom, and a night on the town credible enough to earn rooftop sex with Becky. Around a thousand.). And furthermore, the presence of Drew. She's no 'moll'. She is a bored, slumming wife and daughter of old money power and privilege. It is the people in her world who really pull the strings, who make phone calls, who have state troopers as personal bodyguards. Schultz is just a cheap hood, not even good enough to meet her friends as Billy is. The ending for Billy is best. He is out of a world where he never belonged. He has a nice nest egg. And he will doubtless have the undying gratitude and friendship and maybe patronage of Drew and her powerful family.

The photography is impressive. It turns every surface damp and cold, every texture abrasive. The woods of Onandaga may be dark and deep but they ain't lovely. The forest floor is layered with long-fallen, discarded tannic leaf remnants. The rocks around the waterfall are sharp, the color of onyx. And if I were Nicole Kidman I wouldn't strip and leap naked into that black pool, although I'm happy that she was willing to. The cityscapes are worse. The vast expanse of the brick walls is ugly. The apartment interiors are furnished with stuffed chairs that look stiff and uninviting. And the set designer gives us walls that -- well, as Oscar Wilde said on his deathbed, "Either this wallpaper goes or I do." The Palace chop house in Newark, where Dutch and his gang are finally eliminated, has a brave little neon sign over its window but it still looks like the most dismal saloon in the world. Maybe it's just in the nature of Newark to seem melancholic.Actually the movie is technically pretty well done. We can more or less follow the antics of Dutch Schultz (Hoffman) as he executes a betrayer (Willis) and adopts his girlfriend (Kidman), as well as a young man he takes a heterosexual fancy to (Dean). There are intermittent flashbacks to Willis's murder. They're terrifying. Willis is taken out into New York harbor on a boat, tied to a chair, his feet encased in a tub of drying cement. And all this time we thought that the feet-in-the-cement business was nothing more than a joke.The performances are uniformly good. Hoffman is fine as a gangster who has broken his tether and gone wild, despite the warnings of his closest adviser, Steven Hill. Schultz puts his philosophy something like this -- "If I say I'll do somethin', I do it. If I say I won't do somethin', I don't do it. And if anybody gets in my way he knows I'll kill him." Loren Dean is the open-mouthed teenager from the slums who wants desperately to join the gang and winds up with a lot of money and his body parts barely intact. He's kind of clean-cut looking and does a good turn, without any chance for a bravura scene. Nicole Kidman is a kind of perambulating cat house, a tough cookie with meltingly good looks. "You're Dutch's girl," Dean tells her. "I'm not his girl," she replies. "He's my gangster." That nose of hers. There must be an Intelligent Designer after all, and he's a geometrician who has had a hand in designing that nose. I'm trying to imagine Kidman playing, say, a nun -- but I can't do it. Stanley Tucci is excellent as Lucky Luciano, whom nobody but Arthur Fliegenheimer would want for a compadre.There's a shocking scene in which Dutch interrupts himself in the middle of a sentence -- with a bullet. A dead man bleeds all over the hotel carpet and it won't come out. So while they're matter-of-factly lugging the body around in a laundry cart they break Dean's nose to provide fresh blood and to provide evidence of an accident for the hotel staff.It's an intense movie with practically no jokes. I don't know that it adds much to cinematic history but it's a professional piece of work and keeps your interest.