Metrograph

“You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.” With these words, and the “Bum-ba-bum-BOOM” drum intro of The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” the first Scorsese film to reveal its director’s full, enormous potential begins: the story of a group of young, aimless, small-time wiseguys in Manhattan’s Little Italy, chiefly Havery Keitel’s Charlie Cappa, guilt-gnawed deliverer of that opening monologue, and Robert De Niro’s “Johnny Boy” Civello, the crazy charismatic and maybe just plain crazy live-wire pal that Charlie struggles in vain to keep in line. A bittersweet reflection on the world of petty crime that the young director had grown up around and seen friends consumed by, obviously the work of someone who had studied Federico Fellini’s I Vitelloni and Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, and just as obviously a film with a voice all its own.

Distributor: Warner Bros.