Elegant slumming
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With its cracking pace, brilliant dialogue and terrific performance from Helen Mirren, there’s no doubting the star of this gangland romp: it’s Shand’s show all the way.įull-on life in the ghetto in the Rio favela in Brazil that gives the film its name, this subtitled assault on the senses is part slum blood-letting and part coming-of-age story. Sharp-edged, menacing and shocking in its brutality, the belligerent Harold, having courted the New York Mafia, sets out to build a property empire in 1970s London, only to find it all fall apart.
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An atmospheric and voyeuristic look at gambling world gangsterland.Ī classic that produced one of cinema’s most memorable gangsters in the shape of Bob Hoskins as Harold Shand. Kicking off somewhat explosively at the end of the story, the Ace narrative then backtracks, delivering up childhood friend Nicky (a nasty Joe Pesci) and the quite dazzling Sharon Stone as Ginger McKenna. Transported to 1970s Las Vegas in this Scorsese roller coaster, it’s a tale of two worlds with obsessive-compulsive casino manager Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) playing frontman for the mob while also demanding that the casino cooks put the same number of blueberries in each and every muffin. With a plot based around a love triangle that constantly twists and turns, this is a stylish Prohibition-era take that swivels away from the usual knee-jerk gangster narrative. Always acts up around morons” - he wisecracks, batters and shoots his way through it all. A great man for the quips - “How’d you get the fat lip?” “Old war wound.
#ELEGANT SLUMMING MOVIE#
Gangster movie meets film noir in this dialogue-heavy, complex, slick outing from the Coen Brothers, starring Gabriel Byrne as the too-smart-for-his-own-good Tom Reagan - the whiskey-soaked, battered anti-hero who carries the movie. Denzel is, well, Denzel, but Russell Crowe as Roberts steals the movie from under the gangster’s elegant nose. A showpiece of a movie - flash houses, flash suits, drinks parties and beautiful women - it’s the fallout from Lucas’s criminality that rings most true the moment his adoring mother realises what kind of monster her son has become. Ridiculous yet compelling Union Station shoot-out notwithstanding, once Malone dies, so does the movie.ĭenzel Washington as the smooth but ruthless Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas who finds himself, despite all his power and money, unable to shake off the crumpled but principled Richie Roberts, the New York cop determined to bring him down. “They send one of yours to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue,” he famously growls. As the seen-it-all Irish cop, Jimmy Malone, signed up as sidekick to Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness, it’s Connery who breathes life into this Prohibition tale. 12 The Untouchables Standard good guys/bad guys movie revolving around the taking down of Al Capone, this is worth the watch for one thing: Sean Connery.