Mikey and Nicky (1976)

Best movie of this year hands down!

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Dear Elaine May, your film is one which can be enjoyed for the actors alone. Peter Falk and John Cassavetes literally live their roles as a couple of lowlife gangsters. I could smell the always pleasant odor of whiskey and cigarettes coming off their bodies. Ned Beatty is terrific in a very restrained portrayal of an assassin. I noticed Emmet Walsh in a bit role as a bus driver.You did a great job filming the empty streets, bars and run down hotels of Philadelphia. Frankly, so many filmmakers have exploited the gaudy and pensive beauty of America's cities - especially its underbelly. You've got to respect a country which gives so much space and opportunity to its depressed and crazy to destroy themselves. It is the sort of film which makes you want to drink a lot. Falk and Cassavetes are so stylish holding their drinks.The fight scene in the black bar was so real and intense with all its suppressed violence. It could well have been directed by Scorsese. I read this was shot in the same year that Mean Streets (1973) released. There are so many similarities between the two lead characters of both films and the relationship between them.I was not stunned by your film, Elaine. I found myself losing interest in the second half. Some of the scenes in the houses of the women went on for too long. The dialogs were indecipherable at times. The low key style does not always work. But I bet the likes of Jim Jarmusch were heavily inspired by this film.I was thinking about Pulp Fiction when I saw the scenes with the references to the watch and Mikey's relationship with his father. Certainly, Tarantino ripped that off.Anyway, I am surprised this was made by a woman.Best Regards, Pimpin.(7/10)

It all makes sense that Cassavetes' took Scorsese under his wing, and though Mean Streets came out a few years earlier, I think it owes a great deal to the Cassavetes' crew. In the same way that Keitel and DeNiro play out their tragic friendship on the streets of New York, the same dynamics exist between Cassavetes and Falk here, and maybe more poignantly. The back story of this film is ever so gradually revealed to the viewer, and along the way we get to both love and hate both lead characters. Falk is a good buddy in a classic buddy film, coming to the rescue of Cassavetes in need. But then we find out about the double cross, and Falk suddenly takes on a much more sinister persona. One of the appeals I believe the gangster film has is how the easy camaraderie between the gangsters can so easily melt down into a survival of the fittest contest, and the supposed "best friend" will generally be the guy to arrange or commit your murder. Mean Streets showed Keitel going leaps and bounds out of his way to protect DeNiro, in spite of his best self-preservation instincts. Falk walks the same line, as he becomes suspect by the contract killer and the bosses when what should be a simple hit becomes an all night event. Cassavetes also has a lot of that same crazy, cocksure bravado of DeNiro in Mean Streets, and we see how that tragic flaw in each of them cause their respective ends. They act like little kids, with a little manic depression thrown in to spice things up. Mikey calls out his buddy Nicky for insecurity issues, for always having to prove his manhood, his self-worth, often at the cost of hurting others who are equally crazy enough to love him. The charisma of each of these tragic characters in their respective films is unequaled by any other character in each one's film, and the level-headed Falk (and Keitel) are intoxicated in their own way by that charisma, so much so that they get themselves into a lot of hot water over it. How many of us have not known someone whose charisma, charm and extroverted personality, although troubled, has not swept us away completely, causing us to do or say things we would otherwise never do? But we can never be that person, if we just don't have it in us to be that way. Falk realizes it, and also realizes that those types of characters are generally consumed with too much self-love and not enough consideration for anybody else. That is one of the key elements in each film I think, that dichotomy between the charismatic extrovert who is essentially a selfish megalomaniac, and the caring, protective friend or brother, less outgoing and likely to behave erratically, compelled to be responsible for his brother living on the edge for the both of them. I believe the characters played by Keitel and Falk were both at one point addicted to their crazy friends, so much so that they got in too deep, no limit to what they would do for their pals, and when these nuts got themselves in too deep, stepped on too many toes, they had to step away and let these people deal with the consequences of their actions, no matter how brutal. I would agree with others that it is a Shakespearean dilemma, that need to protect and rescue, versus the need to stay out of harm's way. These ideas that are examined in this film make it incredibly important, timeless, and vital for anybody who values films that are able to portray actual human relationships in a way that is real and true to life, that we can all relate to and that allows us to learn about ourselves through. Mikey & Nicky is one of those films, and whether or not you are a fan of '70s cult mobster films, I believe there is a lot to be gained here regardless of that surface description.

If you want to see a movie about two utterly unsympathetic characters, this is the one. The acting is superb, both from John Cassavetes as the insane paranoid whom, as the saying goes, they REALLY ARE out to get, and from Peter Falk as his lifelong best friend to whom he turns for rescue. Big mistake, but since they're both amoral mobsters, and misogynistic bastards to boot, it's hard to decide whom to root for LESS. Only writer/director Elaine May could have gotten away with this one. I thought it interesting that in a lengthy interview with producer Michael Hausman included on the DVD, he disclosed that the two stars had "very different ideas" about the script, that the director was nearly impossible to work with, that the director of photography had impossible demands made of him, that the crew was constantly angry about being made to sit around waiting, and so on. This mood of one big VERY dysfunctional family comes across clearly on the screen.

Although the director is Elaine May,the style is Cassavetes's.One may think it's a lost work of him.Peter Falk's presence accentuates this impression.The female parts were too small for Gena Rowlands,I guess..An offbeat work,it starts as a thriller with gangsters and maffia,but we soon discover we got it all wrong.It's a psychological drama,a meditation on friendship (how could have we thought sweet Falk ,full of bonhomie ,was a Judas?),on death (the long sequence in the graveyard ) and mainly on this lost paradise,childhood:Falk tells Cassavetes that he often speaks of his child memories with his wife;actually,he'll do that afterwards,at the end of the movie.Childhood again,when the broken watch reminds them of a long gone past that comes back to take its toll. Childhood again,when Cassavetes buys candies.Childhood's memories might explain Falk's ambiguous behavior.Remember James Cagney and his mother in "white heat" .There's a Walsh dash thrown in here.