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Martin Scorsese

Mean Streets – Martin Scorsese (1973)

I may be old, but I am not as old as this film! This old Scorsese is available on Netflix.

“Mean Streets” has a very young Harvey Keitel, Robert de Niro and other actors that made name later.

The story seems to play at the lowest layer of New York mafia. The youngsters are set to collect money from restaurants, rough up some people here and there, selling drugs and -of course- trying to work themselves up the ladder.

The result is an amusing crime film, not about mafia big shots as you see most often, but the lives like those of most people who grew up in these surroundings.

The Departed – Martin Scorsese (2006)

Jack Nicholson, Leonardo Di Caprio and Matt Damon in a Scorsese film noir rated 8.5 on IMDb.com. How comes that I had not seen it?

“The Departed” tells two stories, or perhaps it is only one. Both Leonardo di Caprio and Matt Damon play “Southies” who join the police force. Their background disqualifies them from the start, but Damon manages to launch a rocket career, while Di Caprio’s character is immediately muffled to undercover work, pretty much his old life.

As Collin (Damon) tries to work for his family from within the police force, Billy (Di Caprio) has a growing dislike for the function he was put in. A 2.5 hour crime drama unfolds in which both sides are compromised looking for the rats in their organisation.

The acting is great (Nicholson reminds a lot of Ian McShane by the way), the story is not unnecessarily complicated, the atmosphere is good too. A very descent ‘thrillerish’ drama.

The Irishman – Martin Scorsese (2019)

Scorsese made a classic mafia film with classical mafia film actors such as Al Pacino, Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci.

Robert de Niro is the man from the title, a small time man who works himself up in the mafia ranks. Pacino is great at the overheated head of the truckers union and became one of the most powerful men in the USA.

The Italians in the USA have their hands in many businesses, often illegal. When the Kennedys rise to power, they start to get opposition, but fortunately that problem solves itself. Then internal problems occur that need to be taken care off.

“The Irishman” is an alright mafia film that in my opinion needed not to last for three-and-a-half hours. I must say that De Niro does not really convince.

Bringing Out The Dead * Martin Scorsese (1999)

  • drama

What a great film of Scorsese. We follow Frank Pierce (Nicolas Cage) who works on an ambulance in the worst part of New York in his profession. An overcrowded hospital. The same drug-related calls every shift. Worst of all: Frank has not saved a life in months. The people who died on him, start to hunt Frank as he slowly goes down over his maddening job. The chaos and the stress that Frank experiences is filmed well and thus Scorsese makes a descent and dense drama. On top of that come a couple of brilliant scenes in which Scorsese experiments somewhat. There is a brilliant Tarantino-like scene in which Frank and his partner resurrect a heroin OD in some goth-club. Also there are a couple of hallucinative scene and good, grim humour. Indeed, a film worth watching.