Tag Archives: Vincent Guastaferro

Retro Television Review: Crime Story 1.17 “The Battle of Las Vegas”

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Mondays, I will be reviewing Crime Story, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1988.  The entire show can be found on Tubi!

This week, Frank Homan returns.

Episode 1.17 “The Battle of Las Vegas”

(Dir by Aaron Lipstadt, originally aired on February 6th, 1987)

The hotel and resort workers of Las Vegas are going on strike, and when union leader Slim Mahoney (Frederick Coffin) tells Luca that the unions have no interest in working with the mob (ha!), Luca responds by having Pauli use a big truck to run Slim over.

With Slim dead, Luca tries to maneuver a mob stooge named Sam Taylor (Lee Ving) into the presidency of the union. When Mahoney’s protégé, Roger Jankowski (Anthony Heald), argues that the union cannot sell out to the mob, Abrams and Torello show up at a union meeting to reveal that Sam is crooked and to lead everyone in a pro-union chant. Really?

Okay, the union stuff was a little bit too on-the-nose and silly. That said, at least Stanley Tucci showed up as a bombmaker who was recruited to make trouble for the striking workers. Unfortunately, for those hoping to see him in future episodes, he ended up getting arrested and apparently hanged himself in his cell.

The highlight of this episode wasn’t any of the union stuff. It was the return of Frank Holman (Ted Levine). When we last saw Holman, he was testifying that Luca was a crime boss (true) and that Torello was on the take (false). When Luca and Pauli come across Holman performing with a rock-and-roll band in Vegas, they have a surprising reaction. They drive Holman out to the middle of the desert and .… forgive him. Of course, Holman does make the claim that the only reason he lied about Torello was so that the case against Luca would fall apart. Could Holman be telling the truth? I doubt it. Holman doesn’t seem to be that smart. But Luca decides that he doesn’t care one way or the other, and he welcomes Holman back into his organization.

Why is Luca so forgiving? My personal theory is that Holman, like Pauli, is a symbol of everything that Luca gave up to become a power in Las Vegas. Luca was probably at his happiest when he was breaking into houses with Pauli and Holman. Now that he’s the boss, he doesn’t get to do the dirty work anymore. And yet, it’s obvious that Luca misses it. He’s a born criminal. For that reason, he’s willing to keep Holman and Pauli around, regardless of how much they screw up. In his way, Luca is the most sentimental character on the show.

Of course, Luca isn’t one to let sentiment get in the way of making money. Some things just take precedence.

Days of Paranoia: Edmond (dir by Stuart Gordon)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Based on a one-act play by David Mamet, 2005’s Edmond tells the story of Edmond Burke (William H. Macy).

Edmond shares his name (if not the actual spelling) with the philosopher Edmund Burke.  Edmund Burke was a strong believer that society had to put value in good manners to survive and that religious and moral institutions played an important role in promoting the idea of people treating each other with respect and decency.  Edmund Burke knew what he believes and his writings continue to influence thinks to this day.  Edmond Burke, on the other hand, doesn’t know what he believes.  He doesn’t know who he wants to be.  All he knows is that he doesn’t feel like he’s accomplished anything with his life.  “I don’t feel like a man,” he says at one point to a racist bar patron (played by Joe Mantegna) who replies that Edmond needs to get laid.

On a whim, Edmond steps into the shop of a fortune teller (Frances Bay), who flips a few Tarot cards and then tells Edmond that “You’re not where you’re supposed to be.”  Edmond takes her words to heart.  He starts the night by telling his wife (played by Mamet’s wife, Rebecca Pidgeon) that he’s leaving their apartment and he won’t be coming back.  He goes to the bar, where he discusses his marriage with Mantegna.  He goes to a strip club where he’s kicked out after he refuses to pay $100 for a drink.  He goes to a peep show where he’s frustrated by the glass between him and the stripper and the stripper’s constant demand that he expose himself.  He gets beaten in an alley by three men who were running a three-card monte scam.  Edmond’s problem is that he left home without much cash and each encounter leads to him having less and less money.  If he can’t pay, no one wants to help him, regardless of how much Edmond argues for a little kindness.  He pawns his wedding ring for $120 but apparently, he just turns around and uses that money to buy a knife.  An alley-way fight with a pimp leads to Edmond committing his first murder.  A one-night stand with a waitress (a heart-breaking Julia Stiles) leads to a second murder after a conversation about whether or not the waitress is actually an actress leads to a sudden burst of violence.  Edmond ends up eventually in prison, getting raped by his cellmate (Bookem Woodbine) and being told, “It happens.”  Unable to accept that his actions have, in one night, led him from being a businessman to a prisoner, Edmond says, “I’m ready to go home now.”  By the end of the film, Edmond realizes that perhaps he is now where he was meant to be.

It’s a disturbing film, all the more so because Edmond is played by the likable William H. Macy and watching Macy go from being a somewhat frustrated but mild-mannered businessman to becoming a blood-drenched, racial slur-shouting murderer is not a pleasant experience.  Both the play and the film have generated a lot of controversy due to just how far Edmond goes.  I don’t see either production as being an endorsement of Edmond or his actions.  Instead, I see Edmond as a portrait of someone who, after a lifetime of being willfully blind to the world around him, ends up embracing all of the ugliness that he suddenly discovers around him.  He’s driven mad by discovering, over the course of one night, that the world that is not as kind and well-mannered as he assumed that it was and it all hits him so suddenly that he can’t handle it.  He discovers that he’s not special and that the world is largely indifferent to his feelings.  He gets overwhelmed and, until he gets his hands on that knife, he feels powerless and emasculated.  (The knife is an obvious phallic symbol.)  It’s not until the film’s final scene that Edmond truly understands what he’s done and who he has become.

Edmond is not always an easy film to watch.  The second murder scene is truly nightmarish, all the more so because the camera remains on Edmond as he’s drenched in blood.  This is one of William H. Macy’s best performances and also one of his most disturbing characters.  That said, it’s a play and a film that continues to be relevant today.  There’s undoubtedly a lot of Edmonds out there.

A Movie A Day #121: Frank Nitti: The Enforcer (1988, directed by Michael Switzer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Everyone knows who Al Capone was but few people remember Frank Nitti.  Nicknamed “The Enforcer,” Nitti was Capone’s right-hand man.  When Big Al was sent to federal prison for not paying his taxes, Nitti was the one who kept things going in Chicago.  While Al was losing his mind in Florida, Nitti was the one who moved the Chicago Outfit away from prostitution and into the labor racket.  Today, if anyone remembers Frank Nitti, it is probably because of the scene in Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables where Eliot Ness tosses him off of a building.  In real life, Nitti survived the Untouchable era just to become one of the few crime bosses to die by his own hand.  In 1943, With the feds closing in on him, Nitti shot himself in a Chicago rail yard.

Frank Nitti: The Enforcer was a made-for-TV movie that told the story of Nitti’s life.  Broadcast a year after The Untouchables, Nitti is, in many ways, a direct refutation of DePalma’s film.  Eliot Ness never appears in the movie and is dismissed, by special prosecutor Hugh Kelly (Michael Moriarty), as being a publicity seeker.  Al Capone (Vincent Guastaferro) is ruthless and resents being called Scarface but he never hits anyone with a baseball bat.  In this movie, the only real villains are the Irish cops who harass Nitti (played by Anthony LaPaglia, in his American film debut) and Chicago’s ambitious mayor, Anton Cermak (Bruce Kirby).  Cermak orders a corrupt cop (Mike Starr) to shoot Nitti and the film implies that Cermak’s subsequent assassination was payback.

Though it sometimes tries too hard to portray its title character as just being a salt of the Earth family man who also happened to be the biggest mob boss in the country, Nitti is a good gangster film.  Michael Moriarty’s performance is a forerunner to his work on Law & Order and Trini Alvarado is lovely as Nitti’s wife.  Anthony LaPaglia gives a good performance in the lead role, with the film’s portrayal of Nitti as a ruthless but reluctant mob boss predating The Sopranos by a decade.

A Movie A Day #25: Next of Kin (1989, directed by John Irvin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

next-of-kinTruman Gates (Patrick Swayze) may have been raised in Appalachia but, now that he lives in Chicago, he’s left the old ways behind.  He has a job working as a cop and his wife (Helen Hunt) is pregnant with their first child.  When Truman’s younger brother, Gerald (Bill Paxton), shows up in town and asks for Truman’s help, Truman gets him a job as a truck driver.  But, on his first night on the job, Gerald’s truck is hijacked by a Sicilian mobster named Joey Rosellini (Adam Baldwin) and Gerald is killed.  Truman’s older brother, Briar (Liam Neeson), soon comes to Chicago and declares a blood feud on the mob.

Of the many action films that Patrick Swayze made between Dirty Dancing and Ghost, Roadhouse may be the best known but Next of Kin is the best.  Next of Kin spends as much examining the family dynamics of Rosellini’s family as it does with Truman’s, suggesting that there is not much of a difference between the two groups.  There’s even a scene where Joey’s uncle (played by Andreas Katsulas) tells Joey that the Sicily was the Appalachia of Italty.  Next of Kin also has a better supporting cast than most of the films that Swayze made during this period.  Along with Paxton and Neeson, the hillbillies are represented by actors like Ted Levine and Michael J. Pollard while Ben Stiller has an early role as Joey’s cousin.  Patrick Swayze gives one of his better performances as Truman but the entire movie is stolen by Liam Neeson, who is a surprisingly believable hillbilly.