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BugsyRating:
Release Date: 23 March, 2004 Retail Price: $9.95 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (12 total) |
Bugsy Reviews
Good-looking criminals
Bugsy is easily one of the most handsome pictures of the 90s, but on a second viewing it's a little less impressive than it seemed at the time. Siegel's life and crimes were too all-encompassing for anything less than a mini-series to do justice to it, but even so it's curious that for a film concentrating on his time in Hollywood and his fatal dream of turning Las Vegas into a gangster's paradise avoids his attempts to squeeze the studios dry by offering a union-fixing protection racket, one of the great untold Hollywood stories of the 40s. But what it does do it does well, offering centerstage to its charismatic, contradictory, impulsive and sporadically violent anti-hero and his equally contradictory lover. The violence isn't glossed over (indeed, Siegel's humiliation of one underling acts as a turn-on for the far from saintly dame), although Warren Beatty doesn't always quite convince when he's required to be pathologically sadistic.
The supporting cast are pretty impressive, especially Ben Kingsley before he disappeared up his own backside post-knighthood and Elliot Gould as a very simple stoolie, but it's surprising that Harvey Keitel was singled out for an Oscar nomination for his good but unremarkable work as Mickey Cohen. Still, it did result one of the best pre-Oscar interviews of all time: when asked what he'd do with his Oscar if he won, he casually replied that he'd smash it over Edward James Olmos' head (Keitel's wife had just left him for Olmos at the time). Maybe Keitel should've played Bugsy himself...
Poor portrayal of Bugsy
I purchased this DVD because I love movies with Las Vegas settings. I was excited to finally see the story of the visionary Bugsy and his dream of an upscale casino in Nevada. I will not get into the numerous historical inaccuracies. I expected the history to be screwed up; and it was, but I wanted a more accurate portrayal of Bugsy. Beatty just gave off too much of a Woody Allen vibe for my taste.
More Customer Reviews (14 total)
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