Home Theater Round Up: More Brief Reviews

Here are more short reviews on the older films I watched this week.

Bugsy- Fascinating biopic on the famous gangster Bugsy Siegel. Warren Beatty stars as Siegel, and gives a grand, complex performance. Siegel is hyper-intelligent, but also frighteningly obsessive. He is incredibly articulate, and often corrects other gangsters when they mispronounce words. If Siegel's intelligence was what made him rich, as the film suggests, then his obsessions were what led to his downfall. Early on, Siegel gets an idea in his head that he could plausibly fly to Italy and kill Mussolini himself. When he mentions his plan for assassinating Mussolini, his peers either laugh thinking he is joking or look at him as if they were gazing at a mad man. Siegel is also portrayed as a man of intense jealousy, and his jealousy is so overwhelming that at one point he beats up his significant other's brother under the false assumption that the brother is his wife's lover. Unlike many films based on real-life gangsters ("Public Enemies" being a specific film I'm thinking of), there is very little action in "Bugsy". The film could even be classified as a character study because Siegel's personality so intricately mapped out by James Toback's script and Beatty's complicated performance.

Bad Lieutenant- Earlier this week, I had considered writing a post comparing the original "Bad Lieutenant" to the recent 'remake', "The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans". I've nixed that idea because I think everything there is to say about the original film has been said nicely by other critics and film scholars. "Bad Lieutenant" is an incredibly disturbing film full of horrific violence including the bloody rape of a nun. The film also has a long, close-up heroin injection scene that looks disgustingly real. It's been a day or two since I watched the film, and I still can't say whether I liked it or not. I will say this: "Bad Lieutenant" portrays rape, violence, and drug use as all being gruesome and appalling. Even with an NC-17 rating, the film is far from exploitative. It does not endorse or glorify its agonizing subject matter.