There is much both to criticize and commend in this movie. A lot of the gangsters aren't as convincing as they could be, because so many of them are played by familiar character actors. You end up being distracted by recognizing familiar faces, instead of fully believing in the historical personages.
The re-creation of the Roaring Twenties atmosphere is reasonably good, with small touches like the dance contest playing on the radio, while a hood and his girlfriend have a fight. At a party scene, elegantly dressed mobsters and their ladies dance the tango, until the band breaks into a rowdy Charleston tune. A gangster pours a tea kettle of hot water into his car radiator on a cold morning to warm it up enough to start. The scene of Frank Silvera ,as an infiltrator of the North Side mob, driving a truck full of illegal whiskey into the Moran gang's warehouse, and being slapped around and cheated by George Segal,has a strange aura of reality about it.
Jason Robards Jr doesn't portray a believable Al Capone, but he does convincingly enact a very frighteningly unpredictable gang leader, whose own men are afraid of him. Robards could play this sort of almost lunatic anger better than anyone.
Overall, not a bad movie, though more of a cult item for Roger Corman fans than gangster history buffs. Many of the Corman stock company turn up in small roles throughout the film, lending a sort of in joke quality to a lot of the proceedings.
The re-creation of the Roaring Twenties atmosphere is reasonably good, with small touches like the dance contest playing on the radio, while a hood and his girlfriend have a fight. At a party scene, elegantly dressed mobsters and their ladies dance the tango, until the band breaks into a rowdy Charleston tune. A gangster pours a tea kettle of hot water into his car radiator on a cold morning to warm it up enough to start. The scene of Frank Silvera ,as an infiltrator of the North Side mob, driving a truck full of illegal whiskey into the Moran gang's warehouse, and being slapped around and cheated by George Segal,has a strange aura of reality about it.
Jason Robards Jr doesn't portray a believable Al Capone, but he does convincingly enact a very frighteningly unpredictable gang leader, whose own men are afraid of him. Robards could play this sort of almost lunatic anger better than anyone.
Overall, not a bad movie, though more of a cult item for Roger Corman fans than gangster history buffs. Many of the Corman stock company turn up in small roles throughout the film, lending a sort of in joke quality to a lot of the proceedings.