In 1917 NYC, local mob boss harasses Charlie 'Lucky' Luciano (Christian Slater)'s family. Five years later, he, Bugsy Siegel (Richard Grieco), Meyer Lansky (Patrick Dempsey) and Frank Costello (Costas Mandylor) are a petty criminal gang. They work under bootlegger Arnold Rothstein (F. Murray Abraham). Lucky falls for showgirl Mara Motes (Lara Flynn Boyle). The old bosses are competing and they survive by joining Don Masseria (Anthony Quinn). Faranzano (Michael Gambon) tries to force Lucky to join. The boys decide to take out both Masseria and Faranzano.The overacting overwhelms this movie. It's not just the young cast. The older cast don't come off well either. Anthony Quinn is going over the edge and there are a few side characters that are too insane. Slater and Dempsey leads the younger cast. I'm actually fine with Slater and Dempsey does better I expected. They are not good but there are worst acting involved. This movie is pretending to be a gangster movie rather than simply be gritty. The story is a mess. Not much of it works.

This is by no means what you'd consider a great mob movie. It says the basic time line of the rise of Lucky Luciano and associates. But none of the actors playing Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and Frank Costello are all that believable as their characters. Honestly I think that those same characters are better represented on Boardwalk Empire when they're only side characters. Christian Slater is not very convincing as Luciano, to say the least.Is the movie out right terrible to Gigli, Battlefield Earth or something like that? No. But that doesn't change the fact that it comes no where close to accomplishing what it should be doing with these real life characters.

I'm sorry, I really tried to like this movie but it just was rather pointless.Yes, it's the dramatization of the real-life rise to power of some of the most successful criminals in US history, however, the writers seemed to want to cram as much of their lives into as little time as possible. For instance, in one scene we see Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky in a car that is then shot at by a hit-man. 5-10 minutes later in the film, they are all sitting in a room, talking about this incident with the hit-man...obviously some great deal of time has passed but this was a little confusing at first.Perhaps if they had stretched the movie out another hour or so, they could have built up the characters some more, including the villains. When Christian Slater has his friends throw the don out the window, he says it is revenge for ruining his father. The ruining of his father took oh about 45 seconds of screen-time at the very beginning of the film.I suppose the point is that there was no point to this film. It tried to show the intrigue of the organized crime gangs of the 20's and 30's and it tried to portray the rise of Bugsy Siegel, Lansky, Costello, and Luciano as well as be an action/drama/love story. It came up flat in all areas.Christian Slater...his fake accent was pretty annoying as well. Luciano was born in Sicili and would not have spoken with such an accent anyway.The Godfather, this was not. Goodfellas, this was not. I like movies about the Mafia like anyone else but this was just weak.

An extremely disappointing gangster film about legendary heavies "Lucky" Luciano, "Bugsy" Siegel, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky. It seems director Karbelnikoff had no idea what he was doing when he put this film together. "Mobsters" has none of the power and intrigue that made films such as "The Godfather" and "The Untouchables" so enjoyable.The casting is awful. Christian Slater is no gangster (his performance did not help) and Richard Grieco is no Jew. Patrick Dempsey is the only likable, and slightly believable character.PS No effective music either ("Miller's Crossing"). This film had nothing.Saturday, January 25, 1992 - Greater Union Melbourne