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

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

In 1917 NYC, local mob boss harasses Charlie 'Lucky' Luciano (Christian Slater)'s family. Five years later, he, Bugsy Siegel (Richard Grieco), Meyer Lansky (Patrick Dempsey) and Frank Costello (Costas Mandylor) are a petty criminal gang. They work under bootlegger Arnold Rothstein (F. Murray Abraham). Lucky falls for showgirl Mara Motes (Lara Flynn Boyle). The old bosses are competing and they survive by joining Don Masseria (Anthony Quinn). Faranzano (Michael Gambon) tries to force Lucky to join. The boys decide to take out both Masseria and Faranzano.The overacting overwhelms this movie. It's not just the young cast. The older cast don't come off well either. Anthony Quinn is going over the edge and there are a few side characters that are too insane. Slater and Dempsey leads the younger cast. I'm actually fine with Slater and Dempsey does better I expected. They are not good but there are worst acting involved. This movie is pretending to be a gangster movie rather than simply be gritty. The story is a mess. Not much of it works.

It's New York in the 20s. The men exemplify sartorial splendor and the women are buffed. The photography has a burnished glow to it. The men are all Italians or Jews and they sit around a big table and proffer business deals. They gesture a good deal, running off at the hands. They greet one another operatically, with big smiles and hugs, and statements like, "'Ey, you lookin' good. It's been too long." They're all loving friends except that behind each others' backs they scheme like nobody's business (or "bidness") to kill one another. Then they break out the .45 caliber choppers and God help the Capo sitting at his table slurping down rigatoni and that glass of robust red vino. He's going to wind up with heartburn.I kind of enjoy movies like this, about big-name mobsters with names like Bugsy Siegel and Lucky Luciano and Mad Dog Coll and Meyer Lansky. I thrill at the way the writers slightly bend the story so that we sympathize with, in this instance, Christian Slater as Luciano. He's the central figure -- and he's basically a VIRTUOUS MAN. He never kills anybody unless there's a very good reason for it. And the better the reason, the more bloody and barbarous the slaughter is. He catches Mad Dog Coll unawares and empties his Tommy Gun into the squirming body. The explosion of so many squib charges has never before been committed to celluloid. You remember how Sonny Corleone, James Caan, gets shot up at the turnpike entrance in "The Godfather"? That was nothing compared to what happens to Mad Dog Coll.My understanding is that our real, contemporaneous mobsters sit around enjoying these movies and chuckling over them, wondering, only half dreamily, who's going to play THEM in the next Mafia movie.The fact is, though, that this isn't very original. Roger Corman did it just as well twenty or thirty years earlier, on a lesser budget, and with tongue in cheek. This film tries desperately to be a serious look at what long ago became a joke. The sources that have been ripped off are not only gangster movies, beginning with "Little Caesar" and meandering through The Godfathers and Goodfellas, picking a bit here and a shtick there, but hard-core pornography. There are just enough plot points established -- who's bedding whom, who has a grudge against whom, and how about that tentative meeting between rivals -- to justify the more interesting scenes, the ones everyone is waiting for, sex in pornography, stupendous violence in "Mobsters." You haven't lived until you see a scarlet pool of gore spilling viscously across the tiled floor of a steam bath.Frankly, I'm getting a little jaded. I don't care if these moral morons protected their wives, loved their girl friends, went to the opera, enjoyed rugala, disliked fluorescent light bulbs, wanted to save the pandas, or had a magnificent stamp collection. It's the one percent of the time when they are putting a bullet through someone's forehead that bothers me. Showing us their human side amounts to a sort of apologia. You know -- I'm fundamentally decent. I just have this piacular quirk.They don't deserve this favorable propaganda. They deserve long jail terms, but then a lot of people belong in jail who are now sailing on Long Island Sound.

Christian Slater stars as Lucky Luciano, a prominent mob figure in the Prohibition Era who rose to power early on as a member of a group of four who did things their own way, and whenever they felt the need to get it done.This film was produced in a way that made Lucky and his friends, including Meyer Lansky (played by Patrick Dempsey) and Bugsy Siegal (Richard Grieco), look like products of their environments. Slater's father was roused by one of the local Dons in his house right in front of his family, along with his mother getting a little "attention" as well. The event stayed with Slater's character throughout his life as he set the old man up for retribution. Although based on actual events, I feel this movie fails in one area in that it glamorizes the era. Prohibition meant no booze and that's where this group first got their start, in supplying illegal liquor to these nightclubs.Although a fan of both lead actors and liking the chemistry between the two, this movie did have its own shortcomings, and I found myself wondering when the movie would be over. It was somewhat disappointing to me, considering I've waited over seventeen years to see this film.5 out of 10 stars!

Poor Christian Slater! He tries hard, but the script sucks and he's got a supporting cast that ranges from insufferably dull (Richard Grieco) to manic scenechomper (Michael Gambon & Anthony Quinn, frantically vying with each other to see who can eat the most scenery in the least amount of time).The good: The cast, particularly Costas Mandylor, looks damned fine in the period suits. Also, Patrick Dempsey would eventually grow into his voice, face, and body and join the cast of "Grey's Anatomy." Unfortunately, this movie took place many years before that would happen. Christian Slater is not awful in this film.The bad: Lara Flynn Boyle, the general dialogue, the editing, Richard Grieco (in his "Booker" days, I was a fan!), the script, the story.The hilarious: Occasionally, Anthony Quinn. In addition to eating scenery, he was rarely in a scene in which he wasn't eating a meal, having a snack, gnawing on a table leg ... at one point I thought he'd start gnawing on Slater's shoulder, just to have something to chew on.Rent "The Godfather" if you want to see a great film. This is what a film SHOULDN'T be.