Mean Streets
"Exquisite, savage, compassionate and brilliant."-Joseph Gelmiz, Newsday
"A true original and triumph of personal filmmaking." (-Pauline Kael, The New Yorker) "Mean Streets" announced Martin Scorsese's arrival as a new filmmaking force - and marked his first historic teaming with Robert De Niro. It's a story Scorsese lived, a semi-autobiographical tale of the first-generation sons and daughters of New York's Little Italy.
Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, working his way up the ranks of a local mob. Amy Robinson is Teresa, the girlfriend his family deems unsuitable because of her epilepsy. And in the star making role that won Best Supporting Actor Awards from New York and National Society of Film Critics, De Niro is Johnny Boy, a small-time gambler in big-time debt to loan sharks.
Member Reviews
Stupid People Doing Stupid Things - newdaysof
Mean Streets is about a bunch of Italian-American lowlifes in downtown New York in the 50s fighting and killing each other. If you like to watch ignorant, violent, racist and sexist hoodlums swear, smack, slap, punch, kick, beat and shoot each other for almost two hours, then this is the film for you!
I can't believe that this piece of trash actually launched the careers of Martin Scorcese, Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel. If I had known you could get rich and famous by putting together a low-budget flick with a flimsy script, amateurish and handheld camerawork, loads of swearing and violence, I wouldn't have bothered going to college. The only redeemable character in this film might be the one played by Harvey Keitel: he tries to do the right thing, but even he slaps around and swears at his epileptic girlfriend. The rest of the characters are nothing better than leeches: not working, but spending their whole days and nights borrowing or lending money to each other, then trying to collect, drinking, smoking, pigging out on food, hanging out in bars, watching strippers, selling drugs, breaking things, shooting things, swearing and shouting and intimidating everyone around them.
Some may argue that this film depicts reality, but a good movie has to rise above mere reality, it has to tell a story about characters that you care about with a plot and motives and a resolution. This cheap movie is overated and has no redeeming qualities. In comparison, the movie Taxi Driver, also starring Keitel and DeNiro, had an excellent script, soundtrack, with a strong hero, plot and resolution.Electrifying - JasonTHX
Mean Streets Is mesmerizing. Perhaps the greatest work by a young director since Citizen Kane. It's that good. Just think of that haunting opening alone with Harvey Keitel waking in the middle of the night to plop down on his pillow to the beats of "Be my Baby". (Which Tarintino was right about - Dirty Dancing shamelessly ripped off that opening.) That opening alone knocks you out and the movie just absorbs the viewer into it's world. From the San Gennaro Festival, to the red, dante's inferno-esque glow from the nightclub lamps (which Scorsese world retun to in Goodfellas) to the cramped hallways that Scorsese would meticulously shoot with low light. The movie just lives, is alive and pulsates. It has an almost documentary-like feel to it and Scorsese absorbs us and makes the viewer an active participant (Wheter we want to be or not.) The most brilliant example is the pool hall sequence in which we merely observe the events until almost immediately we are running along, at practical eye level, caught up in the middle of this raging brawl. The viewer become participant. It's not often in movies that happens.
The Music is incredible as well, from "Be My Baby" to The hypnotic Stones, Clapton, Di Stefano, Marvellettes, Aquatones, The Chips, Johnny Ace (In the film's most tender moment*), Smokey Robinson and Cream. Even in his first two film Scorsese was the master of marrying Rock, pop, Phil Spector girl group, Blues and opera to the images on screen. (Lucas made it work in American Graffitti as well.)
There's not enough I can say Mean Streets. It almost makes my list of top ten movies ever. It's influence still resonates today (Reservoir Dogs, Narc, a million other ripoff wanabes) but Mean Streets belongs in a time capsule. It's truly something special.
*(Check out Harvey Keitel In Bad Lieutenent in which Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love" is also featured to polarizing effect. It'll stun you.)Not Easy to Get - koolaid
I gotta admit about half way through the movie I was simply not getting what was so great about it. But after a while I started getting into it. It is so 'real' that you sometimes think you're watching a documentary. The only other movie that gives me this feeling is another De Niro classic, The Deer Hunter. I guess there's nothing special about this particular story but the general feel, scenery and acting is truly phenomenal. Now I want to see it at least a couple of more times. Its influence over movies today is huge.
Member Reviews
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Stupid People Doing Stupid Things - newdaysof
Mean Streets is about a bunch of Italian-American lowlifes in downtown New York in the 50s fighting and killing each other. If you like to watch ignorant, violent, racist and sexist hoodlums swear, smack, slap, punch, kick, beat and shoot each other for almost ...Electrifying - JasonTHX
Mean Streets Is mesmerizing. Perhaps the greatest work by a young director since Citizen Kane. It's that good. Just think of that haunting opening alone with Harvey Keitel waking in the middle of the night to plop down on his pillow to the beats of "Be my ...Not Easy to Get - koolaid
I gotta admit about half way through the movie I was simply not getting what was so great about it. But after a while I started getting into it. It is so 'real' that you sometimes think you're watching a documentary. The only other movie that gives me this ...