Review of Kill the Irishman (2011) by Brandon W — 01 Jul 2012

I have no idea why, but the trailer to this movie genuinely excited me. I mean when was the last time we got a based on a true story mob movie with a cursing heavy testosterone fueled script, incredible performances from character actors and loose overarching moralizing to validate the whole damn thing. Too fucking long that's when, I mean I love an entertaining gangster flick whether its truly great or just a ton of fun but Hollywood seems to be short on those of late only churning out a few good crime dramas at best and few of those being legit mob movies and since The Sopranos ended I've been jonesing for something to fill that void. The fact this movie seemed like it could either do just that with the oft unexplored Irish Cleveland mob scene or else just range from mediocre to plain stupid action movie with mob movie elements. So when it started to gain some buzz, particularly for the underrated Rome alum Ray Stevenson's central performance I got really excited for this one. How did it turn out? Let's take a maggots of the so called Mafia look.

Our movie is about the life of actual Irish American mob boss turned FBI informant Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson, he does give a hell of a performance that makes this movie better than the people behind it deserve to have it be) who starts out in our story as a hard working Dock Laborer. Danny becomes the leader of the Dock Worker's union and local celebrity marrying the colorful Joan Madigan (Linda Cardellini, it would be pretty easy to forget she's even in this)and rising even further when he starts to cut deals for the Union with the local mafia. But his fall from grace is swift when the Police close in an Danny is forced to do stint in prison, as well as being banned from future involvement with the Unions. His marriage with Joan now strained despite having two kids now, Danny goes back to being a dock worker but swiftly rises in the ranks through ulterior motives as an enforcer for a loan shark of the Mafia,"Shondor" Birns (Christopher Walken, as time goes by I find it increasingly strange to find him in serious roles). Particularly in the realm of planting bombs in cars to deal with uncooperative locals but eventually he gets like double crossed or something, and asked to kill a friend of his and he ends up doing it out of self defense when the friend finds out and than he decides to kill Birns and than the big car bomb war between him and the mafia you came to see happens so does it really matter what happened before that?

Look as I said Ray Stevenson gives a fine performance as Danny Greene, a great one even but it can't elevate the stink of mediocrity from the rest of this film. It seems to at the very least revere its subject and tells a well formed if not all the way compelling story of his life but you really get the feeling it's all an excuse to have Irish and Italian stereotypes blow each other up in low budget car explosions, in a semi-stylized seventies fashion. I mean the way they dress, their surroundings and some other period markers show this to take place in the Seventies but its not as colorful or stylized as it wants to be and kind of fails to capture a real feeling of its time and place. This pervasive drab greyness just infects the whole movie and gives it a headache inducingly just ugly look but the characters are colorful, and the sets are cool and well designed so it's not a complete wash in the directing and visual department. In fact though low budget and kind of lame there's something kind of cool about all the car bombings, and despite the dull color scheme its still pretty well shot for an indie flick. All of the other many once relevant actors are more their for show than to really do anything, such as Vincent D'Onofrio, Paul Sorvino, Val Kilmer who kind of narrates the movie at times but is noticeably absent throughout most of it but for a few scenes like it kind of seems like he was supposed to be a main character or even the main character from who's perspective the film is but they forgot to add him in or something and Sopranos alum Steve Schirripa. But this is Ray Stevenson's show, he carries the movie through its many weaknesses and gives a fucking fantastic performance, that thrills, chills, is badass and emotionally riveting in equal measure when it needs to be. He makes the movie worth watching and turns a hell of a character out of a mediocre script and showcases why he's one of the most underrated and underutilized actors in the business.

I won't lie to you this movie's fairly inconsequential, it's a fascinating story but not necessarily an incredible one and doesn't exactly have anything to say that million other more compelling and better made crime movies and shows haven't already. Ray Stevenson can be as talented as he want but he certainly never makes this movie great and debatably doesn't even make it that good but I also kind of enjoyed it. The almost two hour run time does wear on you after awhile but I never really disliked the movie and it's cool to see all of these lonely and one might even say washed up actors in starring roles. Kill the Irishman's not really a great movie, it's actually fairly mediocre but there are worse movies to spend your time with.