Bugsy (1991)

Benjamin Siegel.

Bugsy is directed by Barry Levinson and written by James Toback. It stars Warren Beatty, Annette Benning, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, Elliott Gould and Joe Mantegna. Music is by Ennio Morricone and cinematography by Allen Daviau. Film is a biography adaptation of Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, a notorious American mobster who rose to prominence in the 30s and 40s.

Barry Levinson’s epic film didn’t turn out to be the mobster film many had hoped for. There was great anticipation that this would be Levinson’s Goodfellas. What ultimately came to pass was a film of epic scope and detail, alive not with violence and mobster edginess, but of romanticism, of visionary peccadilloes and of folly. This is both a blessing and a curse, for Levinson seems to be caught in two minds between being respectful to his main characterisation, or unleashing the beast as we know it.

Story concerns itself with Siegel being sent to tidy up West Coast operations, from where he would fall in love with starlet Virginia Hill and become one of the most prominent names in Hollywood of the 40s. Whilst the pic has moments where Siegel seethes and teeters on the edge of murderous rage, much of the history here is scratchy to say the least, where again Levinson and Toback ignore just what a nasty piece of work Siegel was in real life, and instead put dreamy ideals and hot to trot passions in instead.

It’s all perfectly mounted, this is very good film making, it just always seems to be on the periphery of making a telling contribution to the Siegel legacy on film. Beatty is dandy and ever watchable, but this is not a Bugsy Siegel we can identify with, rendering an air of falseness to the story telling. The support cast are strong, though Mantegna as George Raft is miscast, but the likes of Kingsley and Gould make telling contributions with only morsels to feed off of from the screenwriter.

In its longest form it runs at two and half hours, and it’s testament to the film maker's craft that it always maintains interest. Yet the various splinters trying to dovetail into one never quite make it and that’s a shame. 6.5/10

I just reviewed Reds, a movie where they managed to make John Reed boring and now I am reviewing Bugsy... a movie where they manage to make Bugsy Siegel boring.

And honestly, like with Reds, Bugsy helped Luciano rise to power in what is one of the most interesting mafia stories in American history... which you really don't see here. In fact, it's hardly even mentioned.

But... after Bugsy did that he built Vegas, that has to be a cool story, right?

And... yeah, it is a pretty cool story, only they kind of ignore that and focus on a love story instead with the whole Vegas thing as a secondary plot.

So, you know, at least they made Bonnie and Clyde good.

This is based, very loosely, on the real-life shenanigans of Benjamin Siegel - aka “Bugsy” (Warren Beatty) as he evolves from small time, womanising, brute to aspiring property developer in an embryonic Las Vegas just as the Hoover Dam was coming on-stream with copious amounts of cheap electricity. Along the way, he ditches his wife and children as he falls hook, line and sinker for would-be actress Virginia Hill (Annette Bening) whose patience he is soon testing with his behaviour and a cavalier attitude that is likely to see him end up in deep trouble. Things eventually come to an head when he proposes to his sponsor, so to speak, Meyer Lansky (Ben Kingsley) that they find $2 millions to build the Flamingo. A state of the art resort-cum-casino that will make them all millionaires. Unfortunately for him, the costs soon spiral out of control and he is soon being considered far more of a liability than an asset by his bosses. By all accounts “Bugsy” was a thug of a man who took no prisoners. Beatty singularly fails to deliver on that front and the more the film rolls along the less convincing he becomes. Bening isn’t really given much chance to impose herself either and aside from a little bit of smouldering early on and a few tantrums later finds her character disappointingly undercooked. There is a chemistry between them, though, but just not often enough as the film becomes really quite sterile. I didn’t really care that cinematic licence had been taken with ages, profiles and provenances galore here but, stylistically, I just couldn’t get it into my head that any of this could ever had been real. It’s an handsome film, certainly, but insubstantial - sorry.