Mean Streets

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Trailer—Mean Streets

Mean Streets

Great actors but a time sucking boring leech. Pass on this if you haven't seen.

Despite the interest an early Scorsese/De Niro collaboration might hold and this film's influence on the mafia genre, it came across to me as a B-movie in a lot of ways. The script is weak, it has a plot that meanders through randomness (or barely exists), and the performances from the cast were mediocre at best, De Niro excepted. Scorsese gets the gritty feeling of the streets of New York right, and the soundtrack is solid, but that was about it. I had no interest in these meathead, cliché characters or their dreary story, and this was tough to finish.

Having watched a number of (director) Martin Scorecese's profane/violent crime films - some good, some bad - his first entry here is very different from the rest in one crucial aspect: it's boring!! Love him or hate him, you can't say that about his other films. This film just doesn't have much life to it. Yes, there is some action but something is missing, perhaps characters that one could care about. After a while, I found I just did not care what happened...period. I canned it with 40 minutes to go. A dozen years later, I gave it another shot, and it was still just as boring and unappealing. The only interesting facet was to see such young-and-skinny well-known actors like Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. Otherwise, these "mean streets" are nothing but a dead end, so turn around and head in another direction. Don't waste your gas.

'Mean Streets (1973)' is seasoned with sprinklings of greatness, at times showing shades of what Scorsese would go on to do (i.e. 'Goodfellas (1990)'). Despite some solid acting throughout and a few entertaining sequences, though, the film generally falls flat thanks to the fact that there really isn't all that much of a plot and, as such, there isn't any real drama to latch onto. The result is a picture which feels much longer than it is and is also actually rather boring, floating along from set-piece to set-piece without any compelling connective tissue. It ends just as it seems to get going, too. 5/10

An amazing movie that talk about friends, family, business, and conflicts over religion. Scorsese capture in a excellent way the New York of that time and also start to show the world what he could do, and Robert De Niro steal all the scenes he was in, giving one of the best performances in his career at a time when few people know who he was. Harvel Keitel also give a good performance as a man in conflict with his attitudes, his work and the prejudices of the time. One of the best films of the 70's and a masterpiece of cinema with one of the best director and actor of all time.