Mean Streets: movie review

If you thought this was a blog only dedicated to new movies you were wrong. I write my opinion about any movie I happen to see and triggers some thoughts. Mean Street is one of those.

I watched it last night on Netflix and although it has a 7.5/10 rating on IMDB I think it's not a great movie. It looks and it is in fact Martin Scorsese's first attempt to depict the generation of italo-americans in New York city dealing with the old school mafia and trying to make their way up or out. Mean streets to me looked as a deliberate director experiment where Scorsese has explored scenes, interactions, characters and framing that would have helped him make much better movies like "Goodfellas".

What I didn't like was the acting of Harvey Keitel and the story: I'll start from the latter. The story is quite shallow, the movie is 1h 51 mins long and I'd say the first 40 could have been cut; everything evolves around the character of Johnny Boy, but the real action only starts at the very end... it felt like I could have seen the intro + the ending and I would have gotten the same value out of the movie. Harvey Keitel may be able to look italian, but gosh he doesn't act nor sound like one. Caricatural is the word I want to use to describe his acting: waving hands randomly as if only by moving your hands you may look italian, exaggerating vocals so that everything looks even less credible. Maybe I am wrong, maybe the movie wanted to be a caricature... then why so much marketing on the "mean" side of the streets?

What I liked about the movie? The soundtrack is great and superbly edited. The whole crescendo of "La Mala Femmina" preceding the shooting in the night club is genius and only some fine ears like mine could catch the upcoming mess. Also, the directing is good (though a little fragmented). There are interesting shots and sequences, like the one when Charlie is drunk or other shots in the dark that follow the characters in tiny and tortuous Manhattan apartments.

Long story short (or not) Mean Streets should be seen by anyone interested to know more about the evolution of Martin Scorsese's filmography, but if you are looking for a good movie about the italo-american mafia, you'd be better off with (of course) the Godfather or Goodfellas.