Review – Mean Streets

I expect that in 1973 this was some cutting edge stuff. It’s nearly two hours of almost completely plot-free macho posturing. Clearly the theme of the evening is gritty urban realism, but if Little Italy is really like this all the time, they should build a wall around it so it can’t make the rest of New York City any worse than it already is. Harvey Keitel turns in a solid performance as our hapless hero Charlie, a man caught between his basic inclination to be a decent human being with some buddies and a girlfriend and his apparent duty to adhere to the moral code of the testosterone-driven, micro-fascist, small-time mob underworld. More significantly, Robert De Niro here teams up with Martin Scorsese for the first time. He plays Johnny Boy, Charlie’s goofy-yet-vicious friend, a ne’er-do-well intent on going down and taking everyone else with him. Scorsese’s directing is simultaneously innovative and irritating, particularly his excessive use of lengthy, hand-held tracking shots. Overall this isn’t a terrible production, but just a few years later a lot of the cast and crew would re-unite for a much better movie: Taxi Driver. Mildly amusing