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Mobsters (HD DVD)
Universal // R // January 8, 2008 // Region 0
List Price: $29.98 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
Universal has the largest film library in the world.
Admittedly, a lot of those are silent films and wouldn't exactly send hundreds of thousands of people flooding to Best Buy, credit cards in hand, but Universal still boasts one of the most sprawling, thoroughly impressive libraries of any of the major studios. For some baffling reason, though, Universal is hell-bent on scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to picking out catalog titles for HD DVD. They haven't released a legitimate classic since The Sting more than a full year ago, and for every one of Universal's better movies from the past few years -- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Big Lebowski, to rattle off a couple -- they shovel out dreck like The Watcher or Daylight to try to keep the format's overall Rotten Tomatoes score as low as possible.
I don't say this as some sort of sneering film snob, but when I see something like Mobsters on the schedule, I can't help but shake my head and wonder why. We're not talking about some unjustly overlooked gem that's being newly polished for a film-savvy audience that might finally appreciate it. Mobsters is a horrible, horrible movie, one that's deservedly languished in obscurity since this half-assed Goodfellas knockoff limped into theaters back in 1991. It's not a movie with any marquee value. There's no critical cachet tagging along. Hell, Mobsters really doesn't look that great in high definition. This is the type of shovelware that fills up those bathtub-sized $3.99 bins between the aisles at Wal-Mart -- how many people are seriously going to want to shell out twenty or thirty bucks to buy it in high-def? It's like spending ten grand to renovate a kitchen only to ring it in by shoving a bulging, botchulism-riddled can of off-brand Spaghetti-Os in the microwave.
I know it's unrealistic that Universal would want to bombard stores with all of their best movies, but how about some variety? The studio made films that were worthwhile before 2004; why not release one or two of them on HD DVD? Maybe something like, say, Charade -- the Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn classic that Universal was literally giving away for free a few years back -- wouldn't move tens of thousands of copies, but would it sell any worse than Mobsters? How about a Hitchcock or two? A classic monster movie? Touch of Evil? Something? Anything? At least that would give HD DVD a little more prestige value than it has now, and it'd help distinguish Universal from what most of the other studios are churning out these days. Universal is such a wonderful studio with a rich, storied history and a spectacular assortment of films in its collection, and it's a tremendous disappointment that they're unwilling or unable to do any better than this for their HD DVD release slate.
Okay, with that rant out of the way, I'll take a couple of deep breaths and settle into a review I know no one really has any interest in reading. I'm sure Mobsters was in development well before Goodfellas blazed into theaters, but it plays like a low-rent knockoff of Scorsese's instant classic, from the chatty narration that opens the movie to numerous attempts at visual flair that continually sputter and die. Loosely based on the lives of some of the most notorious mobsters of the past century, the movie opens as the underworld of New York is dominated by the 'Moustache Petes' -- the Sicilian old guard of dons like Joe Masseria (Anthony Quinn) and Salvatore Faranzano (Michael Gambon). These are men who preach about honor but have seemingly none; Masseria dismissively turns his head as his nephew is butchered right in front of him, while Faranzano savagely shakes down struggling families in the hopes of collecting every last nickel he thinks he's due. All of this leaves a deep impression on young Charlie Luciano (Christian Slater), who's determined to establish himself as the next power broker of New York.
Joined by his partners Frank Costello (Costas Mandylor), Bugsy Siegel (Richard Grieco), and Meyer Lansky (Patrick Dempsey), "Lucky" Luciano is quickly cemented as one of the most powerful men in New York, thanks to some business savvy and his ability to keep glasses full during prohibition. His continued success starts to attract some unwanted attention, though. Think back to Yojimbo or A Fistful of Dollars; both Faranzano and Masseria want to destroy the other's empire but need Luciano by their side to do it, and this reckless Young Turk is far too much of a liability to be left standing when it's all said and done. Luciano is convinced that he's more clever than he really is, betraying the rules for success he smugly sets, alienating his friends and partners, and getting caught squarely in the crossfire between the warring mobsters.
Mobsters is a disaster. First-timer (and just about only-timer) Michael Karbelnikoff tries to infuse his direction with a sense of style, nicking from Scorsese's playbook with a good bit of slow motion and expansive tracking shots. None of it works, and his nods to classic mobster films with whirling newspapers and fuzzy overlaid images of tommy guns blasting away are jarringly out of sync with the rest of the movie. The acting's uniformly terrible, although that kinda goes without saying when Christian Slater is first-billed. The mix of all these ethnic groups is particularly cringe-worthy, from the "'ey, why you no pay-a the money?" that opens the movie to all the "tough little bambino, eh?" when Luciano's being brutally tortured and is left with that infamous scar. The dialogue is soul-crushingly inept across the board, especially when Lara Flynn Boyle strolls in to play the obligatory love interest role with deep thoughts about love and fate. There's a hell of a lot of violence scattered throughout the film, but none of it leaves an impression the way Goodfellas does. It doesn't help that all four of the leads look like they raided Grandpa's closet to guss themselves up as mobsters for Halloween, never exuding any real sense of menace. These clean-scrubbed kids don't seem like they could knock over a liquor store, let alone seize the reins of a criminal empire. Look, I could go on, but you get the idea by now. Skip It.
Video: At least Mobsters turned out better on HD DVD than I went in expecting. The 1.85:1 image is marred by light speckling, and crispness and clarity can vary greatly from one scene to the next, but the movie generally looks fine. The palette is heavy on browns, although Mobsters' colors do pop when given half a chance, and the VC-1 encode is able to shoulder the ample film grain without leaning on any sort of noise reduction. Mobsters looks okay in high definition, but it comes a lot closer to what I'd expect to see on a channel like Cinemax-HD than a shiny, newly-minted HD DVD.
Audio: Mobsters' original stereo surround soundtrack has been remixed to 5.1, presented on this HD DVD in Dolby Digital Plus as well as Dolby TrueHD. Lossless audio doesn't make any meaningful difference for a movie like this, though. There isn't much in the way of dynamic range, not even when the backstreets are swarming with gangsters blasting away with their tommy guns. The dialogue sounds flat and lifeless, occasionally suffering from a harsh, edgy quality. Considering how infrequently the subwoofer and surround channels sputter to life, I'm really not sure why Universal bothered with a remix. It's basically a stereo track as it is and not a particularly good one at that.
A stereo French dub has been tacked on too, and the HD DVD also includes subtitle streams in English and French.
Extras: Nothing.
Conclusion: Yet again, Universal has reached deep into its back catalog and deftly skipped straight past anything remotely worthwhile. Mobsters is a ham-fisted trainwreck, and even though the movie looks alright in high definition, the mediocre audio and complete lack of extras leave it better suited to fishing out of a cut-out bin for $5.99 a few months down the road. Even then, I'd probably say Skip It.
Admittedly, a lot of those are silent films and wouldn't exactly send hundreds of thousands of people flooding to Best Buy, credit cards in hand, but Universal still boasts one of the most sprawling, thoroughly impressive libraries of any of the major studios. For some baffling reason, though, Universal is hell-bent on scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to picking out catalog titles for HD DVD. They haven't released a legitimate classic since The Sting more than a full year ago, and for every one of Universal's better movies from the past few years -- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Big Lebowski, to rattle off a couple -- they shovel out dreck like The Watcher or Daylight to try to keep the format's overall Rotten Tomatoes score as low as possible.
I don't say this as some sort of sneering film snob, but when I see something like Mobsters on the schedule, I can't help but shake my head and wonder why. We're not talking about some unjustly overlooked gem that's being newly polished for a film-savvy audience that might finally appreciate it. Mobsters is a horrible, horrible movie, one that's deservedly languished in obscurity since this half-assed Goodfellas knockoff limped into theaters back in 1991. It's not a movie with any marquee value. There's no critical cachet tagging along. Hell, Mobsters really doesn't look that great in high definition. This is the type of shovelware that fills up those bathtub-sized $3.99 bins between the aisles at Wal-Mart -- how many people are seriously going to want to shell out twenty or thirty bucks to buy it in high-def? It's like spending ten grand to renovate a kitchen only to ring it in by shoving a bulging, botchulism-riddled can of off-brand Spaghetti-Os in the microwave.
I know it's unrealistic that Universal would want to bombard stores with all of their best movies, but how about some variety? The studio made films that were worthwhile before 2004; why not release one or two of them on HD DVD? Maybe something like, say, Charade -- the Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn classic that Universal was literally giving away for free a few years back -- wouldn't move tens of thousands of copies, but would it sell any worse than Mobsters? How about a Hitchcock or two? A classic monster movie? Touch of Evil? Something? Anything? At least that would give HD DVD a little more prestige value than it has now, and it'd help distinguish Universal from what most of the other studios are churning out these days. Universal is such a wonderful studio with a rich, storied history and a spectacular assortment of films in its collection, and it's a tremendous disappointment that they're unwilling or unable to do any better than this for their HD DVD release slate.
Okay, with that rant out of the way, I'll take a couple of deep breaths and settle into a review I know no one really has any interest in reading. I'm sure Mobsters was in development well before Goodfellas blazed into theaters, but it plays like a low-rent knockoff of Scorsese's instant classic, from the chatty narration that opens the movie to numerous attempts at visual flair that continually sputter and die. Loosely based on the lives of some of the most notorious mobsters of the past century, the movie opens as the underworld of New York is dominated by the 'Moustache Petes' -- the Sicilian old guard of dons like Joe Masseria (Anthony Quinn) and Salvatore Faranzano (Michael Gambon). These are men who preach about honor but have seemingly none; Masseria dismissively turns his head as his nephew is butchered right in front of him, while Faranzano savagely shakes down struggling families in the hopes of collecting every last nickel he thinks he's due. All of this leaves a deep impression on young Charlie Luciano (Christian Slater), who's determined to establish himself as the next power broker of New York.
Joined by his partners Frank Costello (Costas Mandylor), Bugsy Siegel (Richard Grieco), and Meyer Lansky (Patrick Dempsey), "Lucky" Luciano is quickly cemented as one of the most powerful men in New York, thanks to some business savvy and his ability to keep glasses full during prohibition. His continued success starts to attract some unwanted attention, though. Think back to Yojimbo or A Fistful of Dollars; both Faranzano and Masseria want to destroy the other's empire but need Luciano by their side to do it, and this reckless Young Turk is far too much of a liability to be left standing when it's all said and done. Luciano is convinced that he's more clever than he really is, betraying the rules for success he smugly sets, alienating his friends and partners, and getting caught squarely in the crossfire between the warring mobsters.
Mobsters is a disaster. First-timer (and just about only-timer) Michael Karbelnikoff tries to infuse his direction with a sense of style, nicking from Scorsese's playbook with a good bit of slow motion and expansive tracking shots. None of it works, and his nods to classic mobster films with whirling newspapers and fuzzy overlaid images of tommy guns blasting away are jarringly out of sync with the rest of the movie. The acting's uniformly terrible, although that kinda goes without saying when Christian Slater is first-billed. The mix of all these ethnic groups is particularly cringe-worthy, from the "'ey, why you no pay-a the money?" that opens the movie to all the "tough little bambino, eh?" when Luciano's being brutally tortured and is left with that infamous scar. The dialogue is soul-crushingly inept across the board, especially when Lara Flynn Boyle strolls in to play the obligatory love interest role with deep thoughts about love and fate. There's a hell of a lot of violence scattered throughout the film, but none of it leaves an impression the way Goodfellas does. It doesn't help that all four of the leads look like they raided Grandpa's closet to guss themselves up as mobsters for Halloween, never exuding any real sense of menace. These clean-scrubbed kids don't seem like they could knock over a liquor store, let alone seize the reins of a criminal empire. Look, I could go on, but you get the idea by now. Skip It.
Video: At least Mobsters turned out better on HD DVD than I went in expecting. The 1.85:1 image is marred by light speckling, and crispness and clarity can vary greatly from one scene to the next, but the movie generally looks fine. The palette is heavy on browns, although Mobsters' colors do pop when given half a chance, and the VC-1 encode is able to shoulder the ample film grain without leaning on any sort of noise reduction. Mobsters looks okay in high definition, but it comes a lot closer to what I'd expect to see on a channel like Cinemax-HD than a shiny, newly-minted HD DVD.
Audio: Mobsters' original stereo surround soundtrack has been remixed to 5.1, presented on this HD DVD in Dolby Digital Plus as well as Dolby TrueHD. Lossless audio doesn't make any meaningful difference for a movie like this, though. There isn't much in the way of dynamic range, not even when the backstreets are swarming with gangsters blasting away with their tommy guns. The dialogue sounds flat and lifeless, occasionally suffering from a harsh, edgy quality. Considering how infrequently the subwoofer and surround channels sputter to life, I'm really not sure why Universal bothered with a remix. It's basically a stereo track as it is and not a particularly good one at that.
A stereo French dub has been tacked on too, and the HD DVD also includes subtitle streams in English and French.
Extras: Nothing.
Conclusion: Yet again, Universal has reached deep into its back catalog and deftly skipped straight past anything remotely worthwhile. Mobsters is a ham-fisted trainwreck, and even though the movie looks alright in high definition, the mediocre audio and complete lack of extras leave it better suited to fishing out of a cut-out bin for $5.99 a few months down the road. Even then, I'd probably say Skip It.
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