TCM Pick O’ The Day: Monday, March 30th
by John Nolte
11pm PST – Bugsy (1991) The famed gangster running the mobs in Los Angeles tries to turn Las Vegas into a vacation paradise. Cast: Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley Dir: Barry Levinson C-136 mins, TV-MA
Warren Beatty and Annette Bening smolder like Bogie and Bacall in a superb film that only gets better with each passing year. “Bugsy” is one of those rare period pieces made over the last 20 years where the casting’s so perfect no one looks silly in a fedora. Real grown ups placed in a beautifully designed production that never breaks the spell of time and place.
Beatty is marvelous as the charming mobster with a terrifying hair-trigger temper, and Bening is just as memorable as his equal in both the good and the bad. The first time Beatty’s Bugsy blows his stack is an unforgettable Jekyll and Hyde moment, but the heart of the story, the stormy love affair and visionary but doomed (at least for Bugsy) quest to transform Las Vegas makes for one of the last truly great biopics to come out of Hollywood.
The supporting cast shines, but especially Elliott Gould in a small but pivotal role as a sad sack gangster who knows he can always rely on Bugsy for … whatever. You’ll see what I mean.
A truly great film. Plenty violent, but a modern classic well worth your time.
Email this to a friend | Print |
Share on Facebook
| Tweet this
| 
Follow Us on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS
Got a Tip?
20 Comments
I should watch it again. I remember liking it. Especially for Harvey Keitel's Mickey Cohen. But Beatty was never a favorite actor of mine, he seems the same in everything. He's like the George Clooney of his generation. But I do think he's way smarter than Clooney and a better actor. My favorite film of Beatty's is the Parallax View.
This was one of the few Beatty movies in which I could separate him from his politics. The other was "Bonnie and Clyde." I will admit that I agree with JamesHudnall that "Parallax View" was very good also. His lefty, conspiratorial views were in full evidence, but given the theme of the movie itself, why not? Of course there was always "Splendor in the Grass" and "Shampoo," but those were just plain silly.
This was one of the few Beatty movies in which I could separate him from his politics.
Dick Tracy is another one of those few films. I've never seen Bugsy, but I'll try to watch it.
And you have to admit that Dick Tracy, however well- or ill-executed, was ahead of its time. Given the success of Sin City, 300, and other comic book movies, I'd say we were ready for a movie like that now, a movie that operates in an atmosphere of heightened and augmented reality.
I thought Ben Kingsley made an excellent Meyer Lansky. Wish he was in more of the movie.
Bugsy has marvelous production values all right. The actors did a great job (mostly) with the script as written.
However, this film strikes me as an example of William Goldman's point (in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade) that big stars tend to have the script modified to avoid making their character look really unlikable
(when they are on screen).
Beatty seems stuck on coming across as someone who is essentially a sweetheart.
It's hard to buy his sweetness when his daughter boycotts her birthday party. A control freak would likely get angry.
His big rage scene (making the guy bark like a dog) looked like ACTING to me. It just rang false; hollow.
But don't get me wrong. I really like a lot of Beatty's work, even in low-rated films like Love Affair.
Heaven Can Wait is terrific. And REDS is an impressive achievement.
This is completely off topic, but thinking of looking good in fedoras (people wearing them now to look "edgy" look idiotic) but in "Princess Comes Across" with Carole Lombard, it has this one scene of Fred MacMurray in this black suit and fedora – whoa billy! He looked pretty darn good, I tell you what.
Hear, hear. The first time I saw Dick Tracy, it amazed me to see how similar it was to Sin City visually, and yet it was made in 1990.
Thanks, Laurie. I just put it in my Netflix queue. Nothing comes up under "The princess comes across", so I checked Amazon. It's part of "Carole Lombard: The Glamour Collection". It's on disk 3.
I dunno, sometimes I can't separate the politics from the person also. I don't even think it has to do with the politics, it's their attitude about it. I don't like Warren Beatty's politics, but he's not smirky, and condescending and superior about it. Annette Bening is. I don't think about politics when I'm watching Beatty. I do when I'm watching Bening.
Amen, a great example is "The American President," where Ms. Bening is smirky and holier-than-thou from start to finish, as was Michael Douglas… "Why aren't YOU a member of the ACLU?" Now that's smirky.
My Beatty props are for "Heaven Can Wait." Great fun film.
Yeah, the good old days of "Little Caesar" and "Public Enemy" and "Scarface" and…wait a minute.
I always found it amusing that Beatty loved to play the most evil people and try to not only justify them, but gain sympathy for them. Bonnie & Clyde, Reds, Bugsy, even Shampoo, it was always the same. At least Annette Benning apparently got him to stop trying to screw every single woman in Hollywood, but that's about all I can say for either of them.
"The whole point of "Big Hollywood" is our desire that Hollywood return to the days of making good Americans into the hero again."
Well, that's news to me. Yeah, sure I'd love more films like that but "values" are more important than content and "Bugsy" is a very moral film that shows that the price of sin is misery and an early, violent death. If I had kids, when they were in their mid-teens I'd show them "Bugsy" as an exercise in what life is like when you pursue pleasure instead of happiness.
Beatty's politics are a lot like Richard Gere's. He's not mean-spirited he's kind of goofy.
I like Warrent Beatty personally. I disagree with him, but he's never said anything I found offensive. He's also a very good actor and movie star.
"He's not mean-spirited he's kind of goofy. "
EXACTLY ! That's what I was trying to say in my long winded way.
Speaking of politics, on Sunday TCM played Ben Hur with Osbourn and Alec Baldwin as hosts. Alec goes on to say how he so admired Charlton Heston even though they had opposing political views. I kept thinking of the tribute to dead stars at the Oscars where no one applauded for Charlton Heston when his image appeared.
Bening had "it" from her first scene in The Grifters. She still catches your eye. As for politics, talent is a gift to be appreciated, we could all die tomorrow and I didn't used to be this smart.
That scene in The Grifters sure caught my eyes – had to push them back in my head.
If only I didn't know what an enormously psychopathic liberal jerk Beatty is.
You must be logged in to post a comment.