KillTI-icon

There cer­tain gen­res that func­tion as the cin­e­matic ver­sion of “com­fort food” for their fans.  Even if a film from one of these gen­res has seri­ous prob­lems, it can still inspire affec­tion in genre fans if it makes the appro­pri­ate moves.  This is dou­bly true if that film has the kind of cast to inspire leniency.  A great exam­ple of all these prin­ci­ples in action is Kill The Irishman.  It’s the lat­est effort from screenwriter-turned-director Jonathan Hensleigh and it traf­fics in a lot of fami­lar gang­ster movie mate­r­ial, bor­rows heav­ily from clas­sics of this genre and makes some notable mis­steps along the way.

It also hap­pens to be a hell of a lot of fun if you love gang­ster movies.

Kill The Irishman was inspired by a real story and focuses on the life of  Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson), a long­shore­man who became a union orga­nizer and even­tu­ally segued into being a crime boss dur­ing the 1970’s in Cleveland.  The sto­ry­line offers a sort of com­pressed, budget-conscious epic sto­ry­line in which Greene rises and falls as boss mul­ti­ple times, sur­viv­ing sev­eral attempts on his life as his alle­giances shift to suit his cir­cum­stances.  The few con­stants in his life include a friend­ship and part­ner­ship with mob­ster John Nardi (Vincent D’Onofrio) and a mentor/student rela­tion­ship with rack­e­teer Shondor Birns (Christopher Walken).  As it usu­ally hap­pens in gang­ster sto­ries, Greene’s luck even­tu­ally wears thin… but not before he achieves a sort of glo­ri­ous Irish-Catholic martyrdom.

If this sounds like just about every gang­ster movie you’ve seen in the last few decades, rest assured that it plays that way, too.  Goodfellas is the obvi­ous styl­is­tic model, with addi­tional style and story cues lifted from Donnie Brasco, The Departed, The Sopranos and, in the first half, F.I.S.T. The sto­ry­line is densely packed with two movies’ worth of events, so much so that it often feel like a two-hour high­lights reel taken from a big­ger miniseries.

That said, it never goes deeply into the psy­chol­ogy of its hero, instead sub­sti­tut­ing a lot of canned macho phi­los­o­phy and sen­ti­men­tal clap­trap that dates back to the Warner Brothers gang­ster flicks of the 1930’s.  It also crams in a nonessen­tial fram­ing device via Greene’s uneasy friend­ship with cop (Val Kilmer) that never really goes any­where dra­mat­i­cally or tells us any­thing we don’t already see onscreen.

It doesn’t help that the film grandiose scope is hemmed in by what looks like a straight-to-video bud­get.  Hensleigh made a smart move in get­ting vet­eran pro­duc­tion designer Patrizia Von Brandenstein to work on this film: the cos­tumes, décor and vehi­cles all have a spot-on period look.  However, the loca­tion work suf­fers from the small bud­get (it looks like it was all shot on three or four streets in the same neigh­bor­hood) and there are other tell-tale signs of cor­ner cut­ting, namely some awful CGI effects for scenes involv­ing explosions.

Simply put, Kill The Irishman is deriv­a­tive, hokey and ragged around the edges from both story and pro­duc­tion value stand­points — and yet it still man­ages to be enter­tain­ing from start to fin­ish if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the genre.  The sto­ry­line is fast and packed with action scenes, not to men­tion a lot of hugely enter­tain­ing macho pos­tur­ing: the best bit in the lat­ter cat­e­gory might be a scene in which Stevenson smacks around a high­handed, smarmy labor boss that before tak­ing over his office.  Bad CGI aisde, Hensleigh also makes a pretty con­fi­dent direc­tor: his style might con­sist of bor­rowed cues but he deploys them effec­tively and deliv­ers the two-fisted goods that gang­ster fans expect.

Better yet, Hensleigh pop­u­lates his cast with a col­lec­tion of actors guar­an­teed to endear it to genre fans.  Stevenson makes an excel­lent lead, play­ing the title char­ac­ter with a straight face and old fash­ioned action star charm.  He’s good enough to make you wish he could get bet­ter roles.  Walken and D’Onofrio deliver ace sup­port, with the for­mer get­ting an oppor­tu­nity here to pro­vide an intrigu­ing Jewish twist on his usual gang­ster man­ner­isms.  Elsewhere, genre afi­ciona­dos will enjoy get­ting to see well-crafted sup­port­ing turns from Robert Davi, Tony LoBianco and Sopranos vet Steven Schirripa.  Hensleigh even man­ages to find room for an off-the-wall turn from Vinnie Jones!

Most impor­tant of all, Hensleigh totally believes in his mate­r­ial and all the sentimental-gangster hokum it con­tains.  This is best summed by a scene where Greene is at a low point and takes heart when tough old Irish neigh­bor Grace (Fionnula Flanagan) gives him a lec­ture about the saints and Irish mar­tyr­dom.  It’s shame­lessly manip­u­la­tive and utterly corn­ball in its sub­stance yet so totally filled with con­vic­tion that it might win you over in spite of your­self.  The same could be said for Kill The Irishman itself.