When it comes to reviewing mob movies, I usually describe them as either being “an offer you can refuse” or “an offer you can’t refuse.”

Usually, it’s not that difficult to decide which ranking I should use.  If the film is well-acted and if the action unfolds at a steady pace and if there’s plenty of tommy gun action and/or a stylish recreation of the Golden Age of American Gangsterism, chances are that the film will be an offer that you can’t refuse.

Now, if it’s a movie that just features a bunch of guys sitting around trying to sound tough and if it doesn’t really do much to recreate the gangster milieu and if the dialogue sounds like it was cribbed from a hundred other gangster films, it’ll probably be an offer you can refuse.

It’s simple and usually, it only takes me a few minutes to realize which description I’m going to use.  But I have to admit that I went back and forth on 1975’s Lepke.  To refuse or not to refuse, that was the question.

Lepke is a biographic film about Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, an early American gangster who came to prominence in the early days of the National Crime Syndicate.  An ally of Lucky Luciano’s, Lepke was the mastermind behind what became known, in the press, as Murder, Inc.  (Lepke himself was smart enough not to name the organization.)  If the Mob wanted someone killed, they would contact Albert Anastasia who would then contact Lepke who would then assign the job to someone else.  The actual assassin rarely knew who had actually ordered the hit and Lepke was such a feared figure that it was assumed that no one was ever going to turn informant.  Lepke was responsible for some of the most infamous gangland killings of the 20s and 30s, including the murder of Dutch Schultz.  Unfortunately, for Lepke, someone eventually did turn informant and he ended up as one of the few gangster to meet his end in the electric chair.

Lepke features Tony Curtis as the title character.  The film follows him from his youth as a member of a street gang to his early days with the National Crime Syndicate and eventually to his final days at Sing Sing.  Michael Callan plays Lepke’s childhood friend, who goes straight.  Gianni Russo plays Albert Anastasia while Vic Tayback plays Lucky Luciano.  Lepke’s wife, Bernice, is played by Anjanette Comer.  Though the beefy and rather loud Tayback is miscast as Luciano, the cast does a fairly good job.  Comedian Milton Berle gives a surprisingly strong performance as Lepke’s father-in-law.  There’s a great scene in which he interrogates his future son-in-law about what he’s going to get in exchange for giving away his daughter.  Curtis is convincingly tough and menacing as Lepke, who this film presents as being a working class family man whose job just happens to be killing people.  (Tony Curtis later wrote that he was on a cocaine high while filming Lepke, which perhaps explains the intensity of his performance.)

Lepke definitely holds your interest.  There’s enough mob hits and bursts of gunfire to satisfy most gang movie aficionados.  At the same time, the film’s recreation of the 20s and 30s is almost too generic and clean.  For all the tough talk and the gangland violence, there’s a definite lack of grittiness to the film’s recreation of one of the most violent eras in American history, which is why I found myself conflicted on whether to recommend it or not.  I decided that, in the end, the film does enough right to make it worth watching, even if it does still feel more like a made-for-TV crime flick than the gangster epic that so obviously aspires to be,

Historically, this film is important because it was the first American film to be directed by Menahem Golan and produced by Golan and Yoram Globus.  Four years after Lepke, Golan and Globus would purchase Cannon Films and go on to make some of the most deliriously entertaining films of all time.