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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 56.82%
Worth A Look: 25%
Just Average: 6.82%
Pretty Crappy: 9.09%
Sucks: 2.27%
2 reviews, 32 user ratings
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| Mean Streets |
by Dennis Swennumson
"A movie that defines an era, a lifetstyle and a director's importance."
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“Mean Streets” shares a lot in common with Martin Scorsese’s first film, “Who’s That Knocking at My Door.” They both explore people living and struggling in New York’s Little Italy; confronting crime, love and remorse. They are two films that show a director’s work-in-progress yet still distinct style, methods that will not only come to influence Scorsese’s career but also have a great impact on modern filmmaking. The difference is that the dramatic themes, mostly Catholic and masculine guilt in a livelihood of sin, are multiplied in “Mean Streets” and come with stark consequences. This is a film that examines a certain Italian-American lifestyle, an intensely biographical endeavor for Scorsese and his first genuine masterpiece.Harvey Keitel, Scorsese’s alter-ego in his early films, plays Charlie, a 27-year-old man running errands for his crime boss uncle and protecting his reckless best friend from hurtling towards complete self destruction. He knows that he is essentially a sinner and the film is about his struggle with finding penance. The movie opens with this line: “You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.” Charlie then wakes up from an apparent nightmare immediately after the line is spoken in voice over. This is a notion that haunts Charlie; he struggles greatly to find redemption in an existence that is devoid of virtue.
My favorite scene in “Mean Streets” is when a pool room brawl breaks out when a simple collection goes awry. It starts when Johnny Boy, played by Robert De Niro with feverish screen presence, is called a mook by the pool hall’s proprietor. Johnny Boy, Charlie and their scrappy gang don’t exactly know what that means, but a fight ensues anyway. We see the scuffle continue to grow out of control, Johnny Boy eventually ends up standing on a pool table, trying to kick as many of the patrons as he possibly can. When the gang starts to realize that their fight is lost, the police show up. The cops are paid off, all seems to get back to normal, and then chaos suddenly ensues again. This is a perfect allegory to Charlie’s life, whenever he starts to think he has control over his existence, he’s proven to be more than mistaken.
As far as the story goes, “Mean Streets” is rather dense. Eventually Charlie finds himself in a position of having to please his uncle, and keep his job, or continue to protect Johnny Boy- whose gambling debts have begun to reach a life-threatening level. His ability to determine the right path becomes even more clouded with his need for solace, “The pain of hell. The burn from a lighted match increased a million times,” is how he describes his condition. Charlie attempts to gain more of a tolerance of pain by placing his fingers into lighted candles frequently throughout the film. He’s trying to learn how to deal with his ever-growing burden.
What cements the quality of “Mean Streets” as a great film is watching the great visual style and storytelling prowess and knowing that the potential is being fully realized. “Mean Streets” is a film that influences not only the director’s following work, including “Taxi Driver”- one of the best movies ever made- a few years later, but many movies to follow in an entire genre, the blue-collar crime movies.There are few breakout movies like Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets.”
link directly to this review at http://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=2266&reviewer=338
originally posted: 08/25/04 19:15:00
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USA
01-Jun-1973 (R)
DVD: 17-Aug-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A (M)
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