The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

Fairly poor faircial 70s comedy that takes the mickey out of Italian-American organised crime. The comedy comes solely from the idea of making tough, serious gangsters look incapable and silly, and is generally pretty low class stuff.



It's based (loosely) on the true story of New York gangster Joey Gallo, but I found it a bit hard to follow regardless of this basis on fact. We get endless scenes of these idiot hoodlums doing stupid things and getting in each other's way, often saying nothing more than "Hey" as they go about kidnapping lions and trying to kill their disapproving boss.



The cast is almost uniformly awful. I'm probably biased but I think Robert De Niro is the only one who doesn't make a complete fool of himself (the film was made when he was still completely unknown, so I guess he was hungry to make a good impression). Most of the actors trade on racist Italian stereotypes and over-the-top (fake-sounding) Italian accents. Veteran actress (and one-time Oscar winner!) Jo Van Fleet is the most embarassing, everything she says comes out in this sloooooowwwwww pidgin Italian-English and she kills all her scenes outright. Even good old Jerry Orbach comes out of it looking a bit undignified.





For the De Niro fans out there, he plays an Italian bicyclist with kleptomaniacal leanings named Mario. He's a loafing con-artist who takes every opportunity to either steal money or get out of paying for things. He's one of the only funny things in the movie, and his best moments come when he decides to impersonate a priest to try and make some money. De Niro plays it in believable broken English, and arguably (outside of Brian De Palma's early indie films) it's his first lead role as Mario comes across as the closest thing the film has to a 'hero'.



It also goes into some weirdly out-of-place romance territory with minimal warning, and I recommend not bothering with it altogether. It's brashly unfunny and the goofiness hasn't aged well. It has a midget (Herve Villechaize from Fantasy Island) playing a gangster but with a deep man's voice overdubbed. It's that kind of 'comedy'.



DIRECTOR: James Goldstone

WRITER/SOURCE: Screenplay by Waldo Salt, based on a book by Jimmy Breslin (which was based on real events).

KEY ACTORS: Jerry Orbach, Leigh Taylor-Young, Jo Van Fleet, Robert De Niro, Lionel Stander, Herve Villechaize, Jo Santos, Burt Young.



RELATED TEXTS:

- The novel The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight by Jimmy Breslin, based on the real life gangster Joe Gallo. Bob Dylan also wrote a song about the same gangster; Joey.

- Other mafia-inspired comedies: Analyze This, Analyze That, Mickey Blue Eyes, Prizzi's Honour, The Freshman, The Whole Ten Yards, Married to the Mob and Mafia!

- See also Woody Allen's late 60s crime-spoof Take the Money and Run.