Mean Streets (Special Edition) (DVD)

...his semi-autographical first proper feature, Mean Streets. This would serve as the foundation of the cult of Martin Scorcese and establish his most favoured genre; crime dramas. Set in early 1970s Little Italy, Charlie (Harvey Keitel) is a religious sinner, a man who feels a strong obligation to look out for his degenerate and dangerously in-debt friend, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro). He has contacts in high places, including his mobster uncle (Cesare ...
...Charlie to stay away from. Mean Streets is a film rife with sub plots, rather than one main storyline. It's a study of life in Little Italy, and Charlie's affections for two outsiders from the community. He feels he must do the right thing, but the moralistic question comes in of what the right thing really is. Mean Streets is an example of how a great artist structures his work; by incorporating personal experience into it, an aspect which audiences ...

harlequin21 08.04.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Mean Streets (Special Edition) (DVD)

Mean Streets (1973) was the first major project that Martin Scorsese both wrote and directed for widespread distribution. As with his student films, he tried to recreate the familiar sights, sounds and colourful personalities of New York's Little Italy, the neighbourhood Scorsese grew up in. It's a film full of the youthful exuberance of a young director given a chance to prove himself, and while it lacks the polished, neat storytelling of later ...
...Admittedly, I came to Mean Streets thinking it would be a gangster movie, in the vein of Scorsese's most enduring 90s films such as Goodfellas and Casino, all top mafia gansters dodging bullets and trying to move up in the company - involving and often shocking motion pictures, but focusing on characters who need to exaggerate themselves in order to survive. I was surprised to find that at the heart of Mean Streets is its flawed and very human characters, ...

Adziu 09.10.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Mean Streets (Special Edition) (DVD)

...way of a story. Mean Streets sees hoods tackling the gritty daily grind of their lives whilst trying to fathom some degree of meaning from their existence and the lives they may or may not have chosen. This film takes you into their steets and tells of the eternal winding journey between the good times and the terrible. You can almost smell the smoke on the walls and feel the damp of the sidewalk. Battling for his own justification and in ...
...in that you can hold out hope for him, but ultimately you know he will endure and even cause tragedy. Charlie (Harvey Kietel) is his friend, a rogue with a heart the size of central park. His own hopes seem more tangible and attainable, as he tries to guide Johnny Boy into bettering his life by showing him the qualities that elude him. He seems to display, or is perhaps trying to allude to a better way of life, but he is inescapably drawn ...

LatentHeat 07.09.2005 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Mean Streets (Special Edition) (DVD)