Bugsy (Unrated Extended Cut) | Warren Beatty, Annette Bening

Bugsy (Unrated Extended Cut) | Warren Beatty, Annette Bening | excellent ganster movie

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Bugsy (Unrated Ext...

	Bugsy (Unrated Extended Cut) Warren Beatty, Annette Bening Sony Pictures, 2006 average customer review:based on 38 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Warren Beatty and Annette Bening star in the incredible true story of Benjamin Bugsy Siegel the playboy gangster who betrayed the Mob for love. A cold-blooded killer who dreamed of Hollywood stardom a crazed patriot who plotted against Mussolini and the brilliant visionary who carved Las Vegas out of the dry Nevada desert Bugsy had it all. Until he fell for the one woman who wanted more. A critical masterpiece BUGSY is a remarkable collaboration of Hollywood's best: director Barry Levinson screenwriter James Toback and an all-star supporting cast that includes Harvey Keitel Oscar®-winner Ben Kingsley (Best Actor Gandhi1982) Joe Mantegna and Elliott Gould. But at the center of itall is the white-hot romance between Bugsy and the insatiable starlet Virginia Hill.System Requirements:Running Time: 149 MinutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: R UPC: 043396102590 Manufacturer No: 10259

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Chick Flick Wears a Gangster Film's Stripes

"Bugsy," 1991, a biographical crime drama nominated for ten Academy Awards, sure looks and sounds like a gangster film. It was nominated for Best Film in 1991, received the most Oscar nominations that year, in fact, and actually won two Oscars. (It lost Best Picture to "Silence of the Lambs," as Warren Beatty, who co-produced and turned in one of his strongest performances as the title character, lost Best Actor to Anthony Hopkins in "Silence.") Anyway, it earned another seven miscellaneous awards, and was nominated for twenty more: it's widely considered one of the best movies of the 1990's. As written by James Toback, directed by Barry Levinson, and scored by Ennio Morricone, it's highly evocative of its era, and neonoir Los Angeles.

Warren Beatty fully inhabits the title role: Benjamin Siegel, famous 1930's/'40's Jewish mobster, whom you didn't dare call Bugsy to his face. The man was handsome enough ( played by Beatty, after all), to dream of a Hollywood career for himself after taking up LA residence. He was unbalanced enough to imagine he could organize a plot to kill Italian World War II Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini from LA, and dreamer enough to create Las Vegas from the desert, but not organized enough to bring it in on budget, which proved his undoing. His rage, and violence when aroused, were also plenty scary enough.

Beatty is ably supported, as to the underworld, by Harvey Keitel, turning in a meaty, Oscar-nominated performance as feared Jewish LA mobster Mickey Cohen; and Ben Kingsley, doing his incomparable menacing best as Jewish underworld figure Meyer Lansky. Elliott Gould adds luster to his career as hapless Hary Greenberg, who gambled above his head, and socialized above it too. Joe Mantegna fails to bring much to his role as George Raft, gangster movie star of the 1930's and '40's, who was a known associate of Siegel's. Babe Neuwirth turns up in a small role as an Italian countess, one of the many women Siegel could effortlessly manipulate. The costumes call up the glamour of the age; the cinematography gives us LA at its most noir, all those rainy nights, and in color, too.

And then, the picture introduced to a larger audience Annette Bening, playing the ravishing, potty-mouthed, long-legged Hollywood starlet of easy morals, Virginia Hill, as it introduced Beatty and Bening. (Hill had been nicknamed the flamingo for those long, long legs: Siegel named his Vegas hotel, the city's first, after her: The Flamingo.) Anyone can see these two beautiful people, Beatty and Bening, falling in love onscreen: they would marry offscreen. They are so obviously in love, so hot hot hot, they give the movie an emotional kick not generally found in gangster pictures. They actually create a chick flick at its heart.

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excellent ganster movie

This is a good period movie
about Bugsy and how he helped
put Las Vegas on the map. I
recommend it.

visionary gangster

As a gangster movie buff, I watched this film with pleasure and some interest. While the story is certainly compelling - Siegel is pursuing power and achievement more than money - there is nothing about it that stood out for me. Sure, he was the kind of leader who built empires, a brutal sociopath with a knack for seeking the glitziest things in life, from his women to business deals that involved movie stars. Then his vision paid off in Las Vegas, surely one of the most spectacular entertainment investments in history. But this film simply lacked some spark for me. Perhaps I am trying to find something as good as or better than Coppola's Godfather series, and this film did not reach that mark for me.

Recommended. It is good, if not quite great.

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