April 9–16, 1998

movies

Mean Streets

The 25th anniversary re-release of a Scorsese classic.

From its scratchy soundtrack and in-your-face attitude to its vibrantly vicious red hues, Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets is a rarity: a genuine influence on all film since its release 25 years ago. After this, looking at film in the '90s is like watching Saturday morning cartoons. Everything you always wanted to know about Scorsese and his vision shows up in Mean Streets' first few minutes: scuffed-up urban reality, loud music, staccato dialogue, screwball comic violence, Catholic guilt, sin, loyalty to extended family and a little ba-da-bing. Add water to this unripened Goodfellas and it makes its own gravy. Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro—unlined, ebullient—play the two sides of Scorsese; the unflappably loyal, vain, fussy fast-talking Charlie and the quick-to-angst action anti-hero Johnny Boy. Preening and prattling, coarse and savage, these low-level criminals and their oft-forgotten cronies—Blake-loving cavone Tony (David Proval) and slickster wannabe Michael (Richard Romanus)—are stuck between past and future, dedication and reason. This comedy of Little Italy neighborhood manners (they place handkerchiefs on graves before sitting, sex is a private matter, men love their mothers and God), Keitel/DeNiro move as one ("Honorable men associate with honorable men"). But these unromanticized mooks can't change destiny or their own morality. Traveling through crusty dive bars, Mott Street pool halls and St. Anthony Day parades, Keitel, DeNiro and the script by Scorsese & Mardik Martin throb brusquely through Marty's (now familiar) arsenal of shots—the behind-the-head POV that fully introduces the complexities of environment, the pulsing rhythm. Every moment has the potential to bust open like a sliced artery. If things go bad, Marty's hoods just go catch a Roger Corman flick. "You don't fuck around with the infinite," says Keitel's Charlie before the whole shithouse blows. He could've been talking about this film. Ba-da-bing.

—a.d. amorosi