Billy Bathgate (1991)

Sadly Over-hyped

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Billy Bathgate is really good gangster movie,but something is missing, Dustin is usual as ever,great Loren Dean performance, Nicole Kidman as marvelous in breathtaking scenes and surprisingly the unforgettable our hero in the past in Mission Impossible series Steven Hill on a very respectable and fine acting, almost unnoticed if didn't l used to read the opening credits....more helping the Lucky guy along the picture like a father,based in real facts on the thirties.Resume: First watch: 1996 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7.25

An excellent movie about gangsters without being bored. A cast of actors simply amazing, with the beautiful Nicole Kidman more beautiful than ever. Unlike Godfather, here we see the mafia world through the eyes of a street kid who wants fame and money.In the Godfather movie, all the characters are already on top, it does not show how they arrived and they are almost invincible to either the government, the police or rival gangs. Here the mob has to work hard. Violence is just right and the nudity scenes are very well done. A nudity scene always improves the movie in question. The action is also very good, here there is no place for annoyance. A movie that I like a lot, I have in Blu ray and I recommend it.

While hanging out with friends in 1935 New York City, Prohibition-era poor Loren Dean (as Billy "Bathgate" Behan) notices notorious gangster Dustin Hoffman (as Arthur "Dutch Schwartz" Flegenheimer) doing his dirty work. After admiring Mr. Dean's ability to juggle four balls, Mr. Hoffman gives the younger man a job with the mob. Dean begins by sweeping the floor, but is quickly promoted to keeping smoking hot girlfriend Nicole Kidman (as Drew) satisfied under the sheets...One of the problems with "Billy Bathgate" is that Dean appears as a fully grown man who is being treated, and often acts, like he's a 14-year-old kid. Sometimes he is made to appear shorter and younger, but it's really a lost cause. Consequently, the scenes with Dean and the other men seem silly. And, even on his own, top-billed Hoffman's character registers nothing but ugly.Dean is more convincing with Ms. Kidman, who has a brief "full frontal" moment after a swim. A highlight is the "Saratoga" horse-racing sequence, with Dean, Kidman and Steve Buscemi (as Irving). Kidman has a husband (Xander Berkeley) who likes to unbutton a man's shirt on the couch, and another (Bruce Willis) who gets to try on a pair of Hoffman's cement shoes...***** Billy Bathgate (11/1/91) Robert Benton ~ Loren Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Steven Hill

The photography is impressive. It turns every surface damp and cold, every texture abrasive. The woods of Onandaga may be dark and deep but they ain't lovely. The forest floor is layered with long-fallen, discarded tannic leaf remnants. The rocks around the waterfall are sharp, the color of onyx. And if I were Nicole Kidman I wouldn't strip and leap naked into that black pool, although I'm happy that she was willing to. The cityscapes are worse. The vast expanse of the brick walls is ugly. The apartment interiors are furnished with stuffed chairs that look stiff and uninviting. And the set designer gives us walls that -- well, as Oscar Wilde said on his deathbed, "Either this wallpaper goes or I do." The Palace chop house in Newark, where Dutch and his gang are finally eliminated, has a brave little neon sign over its window but it still looks like the most dismal saloon in the world. Maybe it's just in the nature of Newark to seem melancholic.Actually the movie is technically pretty well done. We can more or less follow the antics of Dutch Schultz (Hoffman) as he executes a betrayer (Willis) and adopts his girlfriend (Kidman), as well as a young man he takes a heterosexual fancy to (Dean). There are intermittent flashbacks to Willis's murder. They're terrifying. Willis is taken out into New York harbor on a boat, tied to a chair, his feet encased in a tub of drying cement. And all this time we thought that the feet-in-the-cement business was nothing more than a joke.The performances are uniformly good. Hoffman is fine as a gangster who has broken his tether and gone wild, despite the warnings of his closest adviser, Steven Hill. Schultz puts his philosophy something like this -- "If I say I'll do somethin', I do it. If I say I won't do somethin', I don't do it. And if anybody gets in my way he knows I'll kill him." Loren Dean is the open-mouthed teenager from the slums who wants desperately to join the gang and winds up with a lot of money and his body parts barely intact. He's kind of clean-cut looking and does a good turn, without any chance for a bravura scene. Nicole Kidman is a kind of perambulating cat house, a tough cookie with meltingly good looks. "You're Dutch's girl," Dean tells her. "I'm not his girl," she replies. "He's my gangster." That nose of hers. There must be an Intelligent Designer after all, and he's a geometrician who has had a hand in designing that nose. I'm trying to imagine Kidman playing, say, a nun -- but I can't do it. Stanley Tucci is excellent as Lucky Luciano, whom nobody but Arthur Fliegenheimer would want for a compadre.There's a shocking scene in which Dutch interrupts himself in the middle of a sentence -- with a bullet. A dead man bleeds all over the hotel carpet and it won't come out. So while they're matter-of-factly lugging the body around in a laundry cart they break Dean's nose to provide fresh blood and to provide evidence of an accident for the hotel staff.It's an intense movie with practically no jokes. I don't know that it adds much to cinematic history but it's a professional piece of work and keeps your interest.