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Billy Bathgate zuh?

#1 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 10 April 2010 - 09:18 PM

So, this thing somehow has a, like, 50 percent on RT.COM... Double you tea eff? This is probably one of my favorite mob movies. I think one reason for its lack of theatrical popularity is that it downplays the violence quite a bit. Theres no Tommy guns blazing, no really great shootouts. It's either ruthlessly efficient, or stunningly messy, just as Dutch Schultz pointed out in the film. No one was looking to win awards with the fight choreography here, and I find that kind of refreshing and real but not in a tarantino "this is gritty and realistic because a guy just got his ear cut off" way.

So, if you've seen this, tell me what the deal is that this film (starring Bruce Willis, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman and Steve Buscemi) failed in the box office and only garners the approval of half the critics. And if you haven't, you'd better have a good excuse.

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#2 User is offline   Gobbler Icon

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Posted 12 April 2010 - 06:58 AM

Haven't seen it so far, but by god... going by that list of actors it should rank pretty high up in the genre, they're practically born for stuff like this. Well maybe except for Buscemi, he was born to be a god but the stork must have gotten confused because of some atmospheric interference or something.

Guess the script really sucked then.

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#3 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 12 April 2010 - 04:56 PM

That's what I was thinking. The script and filming really arent that bad, I mean I enjoyed the story, and most of the roles seem well acted. You should definately check it out some time. One complaint is I dont remember it having very memorable music, but thats the only flaw I could really bring up.

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#4 User is offline   civilian_number_two Icon

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Posted 25 April 2010 - 09:37 AM

OK, I had never seen this movie. I remember it coming and going, but I never got around to it. So I went and got it so I could see if I agreed with you.

Well, yes the movie isn't so bad. Mobster stuff seen from the point of view of a kid, but a kid old enough that he's not an annoying kid. The pace and tone of the movie are good, and like you say the violence is realistic, not so much movie stuff, sorta like The Godfather or Goodfellas.

My complaint with the movie is that the ending seems like it comes from nowhere. Like, we've run out of screen time so we better have something happen that ends this thing.
Spoiler
I thought the ending was weak mainly because it just came and went like that. I know, we should have suspected that something was coming, sure, but the way it happened seemed tacked on.
Spoiler
So anyway, those are my criticisms, such as they are.

The novel Billy Bathgate won the 1989 National Book Critics Circle award for fiction for 1990 and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, and was the runner up for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize, and is apparently a meditation on self determination versus fate, attempts to explore and establish the theory postulating the futility of sex without love, moral relativism, and the romanticization of the Mafia in American pop culture.
(source wikipedia). I'm not going to take the time to read the novel, but some of the film critics might have. If the book had this depth to it, I could see a critic finding the film to be a shallow rip-off. But I'm not going to get into this much, apart from bringing it up, because then I'd have to read the book.

Throughout the film I was thinking of a Zhang Yimou film, Shanghai Triad. ST must have been ripping off Billy Bathgate, because it covers such similar territory, being a gangster film in mainland China in the thirties, concerning itself with an old mob boss and a woman in his employ, all being observed by a young child. If you like Billy Bathgate (and again, I did, mostly), Shanghai Triad is worth watching.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#5 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 25 April 2010 - 02:55 PM

I'm glad you checked it out, this thing seems kind of underappreciated given the amount of star power in it. It came out at the same time as Bugsy, which to me looks like the lesser film. I think the ending could have been somewhat more climactic, for sure, but then, if you look at the entropy acting on Schultz and his gang, it almost seems like foreshadowing, like the sudden violence is a natural conclusion to Schultz's slow downfall. That always seemed to me to be why Berman gave the kid the money, I mean by that point with Luciano et al all lined up against them, he at least had to know they were going down, so why drag anyone else with them? That's kind of how I viewed it. Berman seemed to be the only member of the gang who was keyed in to just how fucked up things were getting while Dutch got increasingly out of control.

Never saw Shanghai Triad or read the book, maybe I should.

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Posted 26 April 2010 - 02:42 AM

Agh, blast, still didn't get around to checking it out. Life's way too busy right now - how the fuck did that happen anyway...

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Posted 09 July 2010 - 02:44 AM

If you go by Billy Bathgate and shooting and mob rule until the law of the people, who, like most people here, to be disappointed. Taking into account the points I made here, however, should enjoy more.
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Posted 12 July 2010 - 02:52 PM

View PostJ m HofMarN, on 25 April 2010 - 03:55 PM, said:

I'm glad you checked it out, this thing seems kind of underappreciated given the amount of star power in it. It came out at the same time as Bugsy, which to me looks like the lesser film. I think the ending could have been somewhat more climactic, for sure, but then, if you look at the entropy acting on Schultz and his gang, it almost seems like foreshadowing, like the sudden violence is a natural conclusion to Schultz's slow downfall. That always seemed to me to be why Berman gave the kid the money, I mean by that point with Luciano et al all lined up against them, he at least had to know they were going down, so why drag anyone else with them? That's kind of how I viewed it. Berman seemed to be the only member of the gang who was keyed in to just how fucked up things were getting while Dutch got increasingly out of control.

Never saw Shanghai Triad or read the book, maybe I should.

Whoops, just saw this now. I didn't have any trouble with Berman handing the kid a bunch of money. It's when Luciano takes it and the kid asks for it back, there I have the trouble. At that point Luciano had already considered just murdering the kid but he changed his mind. The kid, aware of this, then asks for enough money to buy the entire neighbourhood he grew up in. And Lucky goes, "yeah, what the hell." Stealing the money from the safe afer not even really haviong met Luciano is far more believable, less cinematic, and therefore more serious in tone than what they did. So ... that sort of thing, really, is my only complaint.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#9 User is offline   J m HofMarN Icon

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Posted 17 July 2010 - 11:08 PM

That was a bit odd, guess it jsut had to be a happy ending. Although considering the fact that the kid had just saved Luciano from being betrayed and robbed of, probably, a far greater amount of money, I don't see Lucky giving the kid back his own money to be particularly out of character. Stealing from a guy is different than taking what's due, I mean the mobsters did have a code of conduct especially with regards to eachother.

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I don't know about you but I have never advocated that homosexuals, for any reason, be cut out of their mother's womb and thrown into a bin.
- Deucaon toes a hard line on gay fetus rights.
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