We’ve been trained by Coppola and Scorsese to expect mobster movies to follow epic story arcs, so it might feel a little odd to watch one that’s more tightly wound around a small series of events. Or maybe “Billy Bathgate” (1991) isn’t all that good. It didn’t do much for the career of Loren Dean (Billy), who carries this Depression-era story headlined by Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman and Bruce Willis. Kidman sleeps with all of them while being married to Xander Berkeley, a more interesting subplot than the main gangster boilerplate. Billy’s a young wannabe. Maybe this film was, too.
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The first time Daniel Craig is handed a gun in “Layer Cake” (2005), he briefly prances around like he’s 007 or something. That would still be a year or so away. We get to see him command a stage while on the wrong side of the law in this classic British gangster flick. There’s a much-coveted shipment of drugs and lots of double-crossing, just like in most gangster flicks, including the bad ones. The good ones let you follow along just closely enough to think you know what’s going on, when you really, really, don’t. This is a good one.
The old man has told this fable many times before, but it’s been a while. Delighted to have an audience, he can’t help but take tangents and add embellishments that make the fable as drawn out as a four-day drive from Philadelphia to Detroit. Still, there’s the same cast of characters portraying the survivor’s tale of allegiance versus betrayal, honor versus law, the family business versus the business of family. But with one more deep directorial breath, Martin Scorsese twists the ending. In “The Irishman” (2019), we’re left to wonder whether it would have been better to have lost bravely.
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