When I first heard HBO was putting out a film on the life of Myer Lansky starring Richard Dreyfuss, who I really admire, my initial reaction was can he pull this off? I totally underestimated his abilityas an actor. Part of my thinking was within the look-a-like department.But with Ricard Drefyuss, along with Joshua Praw and Ryan Merriman (who both play the younger Lansky) I felt that director John McNaughton,along with Richard Dreyfus' ability to clone the movements and essential dramatic aspect, for his portrayal of Myer Lansky made this film work for me. With Anthony LaPaglia (as Charles "Lucky "Luciano),and the incomparable Eric Roberts (as Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel), as the frosting on the cake. While I really admired Warren Beatty's version of Siegel (Bugsy 1991) Robert's performance will grow on you in a different positive way. The fact that Myer Lansky outlived all of his contemporaries, without ever getting convicted of a crime, is an amazing thing in of itself. His ability to constantly evade, truth in life, was enough to get me interested in his story, along with the fact that I had read the books by Uri Dan and Dennis Eisenberg piqued my interest even further. Some have said the screen writers miss a lot the factual points of Myer Lansky's life, but how can we truly argue this point, when we have no concrete idea of what these points were? I watched the original airing of Lansky on February 27th, 1999 on HBO. I do not take to a lot of movies right away but the more I watched "Lansky" the more it grew on me. I now consider it one of my favorite films. On the negative side I wish the film could have been much longer, with more dramatic detail (whether these details were true or not) While the film does show Lansky's initial meeting with Anna Citron, the film does not extrapolate on her eventual outcome. Another thing to consider is if dramatic films covered all the absolute truths,they would lose some of their entertainment value (for me) I have documentaries for that area. The cinematography, along with the orchestral soundtrack, along with the popular hits of that time period are also superb." Lansky" also does a credible job of capturing the period settings (e.g. turn of the century lower east side) I highly recommend the film "Lansky"

I saw the movie yesterday on HBO. Liked Robert Dreyfuss' performance very much. He is great! But didn't understand what happened to Lansky's first wife, Anna. She simply disappeared with no explanation and was suddenly "replaced" by Teddy. Did Anna die? Did the Lansky divorced? It seems that the producers made the movie only for the mob's admirers and/or experts, supposing that everybody would understand the story. There was a lack of some connections to make the movie understandable. Even so, I enjoyed it very much, especially because of Dreyfuss, who happens to be one of my favorite North American actors. Anthony La Paglia played well too and even Eric Roberts had a good performance.

This movie could have been alot better. Meyer Lansky was to me far more interresting then both Siegel or Luciano. David Mamet is a great writer, but his script here just isn't that good. A few simple details were changed and the editing isn't all that good either. They should have told the audience which period we were looking at during certain times of Lanskys life. The movie begins around 1972 in Israel then we go back to the early 1900's in Russia and then to like 1912 in Manhattan, but you don't see that. You also don't hear about the 400$ million dollars that Lansky had in Sviss banks at the time of his death which is a fact by now. His Florida operations were also very known and he was the one who gave orders to both Santo Trafficante Jnr. and Carlos Marcello. Despite the lack of storytelling the acting is great. Richard Dreyfuss is extremely good as Lansky and Perlich also, but Roberts and LaPaglia somehow didn't fit in there. I give this movie *1/2 stars out of four.

If done well, this would be a very interesting movie, but as it is, it's very marginal. The shift from his youth days, to his 30's and 1978 gets very confusing. There are times the issue of Meyer Lansky being Jewish is brought up in the film, but later it's simply forgotten. That's the scenes during his childhood and the 1978 scenes. Between that, nothing. All we see in the film is only about Lansky, but it would have been interesting to see what his friends and enemies think and mean about him. I'm losing faith in HBO movies.The verdict: 1.5 of 5 stars.