This isn't bad, considering. That is, considering that it's still ANOTHER comedy thriller about the Mafia. The men lust after each other's wives and girl friends, drive monstrous cars, wear splashy suits and two-toned shoes, are dutifully sad at the funerals of their own victims, have mothers who bawl over them, pack pistols, move everywhere in squads, and are haunted by the FBI.
The women are friendly but keep a wary eye on their men. They wear their hair in curly fright wigs, sport rings with stones the size of Plymouth rock, are covered in bangles, and visit the beauty salons daily. Everybody speaks with a working-class New York accent. When, if ever, will this genre run out of steam? When will it dwindle to a palpitating point and vanish for another generation?
Alec Baldwin is doing Dean Stockwell's girl friend and when Stockwell finds out he disposes of Baldwin in a spritzbad. Stockwell then contracts a case of the hots for Baldwin's widow, Michelle Pfeiffer, and pursues her even as she tries to escape to a crummy flat in Queens and establish an anonymous existence for herself and her boy. At the same time, Stockwell's wife, Mercedes Ruehl, is having epileptiform seizures over the fancy that Stockwell is doing Pfeiffer.
Meanwhile, Mathew Modine is an FBI undercover agent who is bugging Pfeiffer's apartment to get evidence on Stockwell and insinuating himself into her life and -- well, it all leads to a climactic shoot out in one of those giant and thoroughly vulgar Miami hotels with multi-room suites the color of moonstones.
It all comes together pretty well. There is no credit for dialog coach, though maybe there should have been. Michelle only blows it once, when she asks Modine if he would like "something to eat." It should have been "sump'n," not "something." Most of the acting credit goes to Mercedes Ruehl as Stockwell's pistol-packing wife. Hers is the most flamboyant performance in a flamboyant role in a flamboyant picture.
All the more applause is due to the cast who are not named DeNiro, Pacino, Pesci, DeVito, Spinelli, Liota, Bracco, or Gandolfini. The appointment -- the accents, the gestures, the expressions -- are by now so familiar that they can be easily imitated even by Italian-Americans.
"'EY -- whadda ya tink, we're all giadruls heah? Fugeddabout it."
The women are friendly but keep a wary eye on their men. They wear their hair in curly fright wigs, sport rings with stones the size of Plymouth rock, are covered in bangles, and visit the beauty salons daily. Everybody speaks with a working-class New York accent. When, if ever, will this genre run out of steam? When will it dwindle to a palpitating point and vanish for another generation?
Alec Baldwin is doing Dean Stockwell's girl friend and when Stockwell finds out he disposes of Baldwin in a spritzbad. Stockwell then contracts a case of the hots for Baldwin's widow, Michelle Pfeiffer, and pursues her even as she tries to escape to a crummy flat in Queens and establish an anonymous existence for herself and her boy. At the same time, Stockwell's wife, Mercedes Ruehl, is having epileptiform seizures over the fancy that Stockwell is doing Pfeiffer.
Meanwhile, Mathew Modine is an FBI undercover agent who is bugging Pfeiffer's apartment to get evidence on Stockwell and insinuating himself into her life and -- well, it all leads to a climactic shoot out in one of those giant and thoroughly vulgar Miami hotels with multi-room suites the color of moonstones.
It all comes together pretty well. There is no credit for dialog coach, though maybe there should have been. Michelle only blows it once, when she asks Modine if he would like "something to eat." It should have been "sump'n," not "something." Most of the acting credit goes to Mercedes Ruehl as Stockwell's pistol-packing wife. Hers is the most flamboyant performance in a flamboyant role in a flamboyant picture.
All the more applause is due to the cast who are not named DeNiro, Pacino, Pesci, DeVito, Spinelli, Liota, Bracco, or Gandolfini. The appointment -- the accents, the gestures, the expressions -- are by now so familiar that they can be easily imitated even by Italian-Americans.
"'EY -- whadda ya tink, we're all giadruls heah? Fugeddabout it."