Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Movie review - "Mean Streets" (1973) ***1/2

 Not my cup of tea though I appreciate the talent, the authenticity, the pace.

Maybe I've seen too many imitators - slice of life coming of age dramas with wanna be toughs yelling at each other. Film critics/buffs loved all the references - the autobiographical bits, the film references (going to see a Western, Harvey Keitel liking John Wayne).

So much of it feels familiar I think now because Scorsese did so many scenes of Italian Americans yelling at each other in bars with tracks playing in the background and bursts of violence. And the depiction of women is so, as he tends do to (madonna/whore).

I respect this film, I really do. I just don't like it that much. I generally don't when Scorsese wrote the script. I think it's mostly because de Niro's character is such a boor I don't care about him, Keitel has every right to get angry. Why support him? If people accept that relationship and feel for de Niro they'll enjoy this movie more.

Oh shout out to the fact a Roger Corman film is in this. Scorsece picked up enough Corman exploitation to make sure there's female nudity from Amy Robinson in the Breathless sequence (also I gather he had to include it in Who's That Knocking on My Door to sell it.)

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