FRANK NITTI: THE ENFORCER
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: In gangster films fidelity to the truth
is a rarity. Frank Nitti, who has been misrepresented many
times in film, finally gets an almost reasonable treatment in
a film. There are still lots of liberties, but fewer than in
most films of the genre. Rating: low +2.
Last summer when Brian DePalma's THE UNTOUCHABLES was released, I made the comment that nobody seemed to get the facts right about Frank Nitti, a gangster who was misrepresented by the papers in his own time and who became the regular arch-rival of Elliot Ness in television's UNTOUCHABLES after the series had their Capone go to prison. DePalma had Nitti dying before Capone ever got to prison. Each had a polished pre-shaped image for Nitti to fit into the story they wanted to tell. Now ABC has made a film to tell just the story of Nitti himself. I watched it with curiosity to find out if someone was finally going to get down to the real gritty Nitti.
Well, something everybody gets wrong about Nitti was the idea that he ran the Capone gang after Big Al got sent up (DePalma got it wrong differently but even less accurately). The contemporary newspapers wanted to write about a single person running the gang and with Al gone they wrote the story as if Nitti ran the gang. In truth the organization of the gang became pretty complicated with different people having power in different areas. Nitti may have even thought that he was running the show, but in truth he did not command much obedience. Well, FRANK NITTI: THE ENFORCER makes pretty much the same mistake; at least if Nitti has competition running the mob, the film understates it for many of the years it was going on. Beyond that as far as I have been able to verify the facts in Carl Sifakis's authoritative ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN CRIME and MAFIA ENCYCLOPEDIA, the film has a sort of 50-50 hold on the truth. They get off to a bad start by saying that Nitti was born in 1888, making him four years younger than he actually was. Then the film has him seeking out Capone out of respect. Not so--Nitti had parlayed his job as a barber for small-time hoods into a fencing job before he had ever met Capone. The Capone gang sought Nitti out to sell him stolen booze. His skill at organization, not so much at killing, was the reason he rose in the organization. It did leave him in a good position when Capone went to prison, but not the undisputed head the papers made him out to be. Speaking of the papers, the film did get right that Elliot Ness was a headline hound who had little serious effect on the mob, but who was a hero in the papers. That seems to be the truth.
By padding the film with a love story and showing scenes of incidents like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre without telling what led up to them, the filmmakers have produced a story much of which is neither really accurate nor inaccurate. There is also some speculation stated as fact. The killing of Chicago Mayor Cermack is usually assumed to be an accident when he got in the way of an assassin's bullet intended for FDR. The film's claim that the assassin Zangara was actually trying to kill Cermack under orders from the Capone mob is only a minority opinion. Beyond that, much of the plot and particularly the muscling into the entertainment business and how it led to Nitti's death was all square with the encyclopedia facts.
FRANK NITTI: THE ENFORCER is nicely photographed in subdued colors that both satisfy the network's requirement for color and evoke some of the black-and-white feel of the classic gangster films or the sepia tone of the photography of the period. Anthony LaPaglia (playing Nitti) leads a cast of unfamiliar faces (one exception is Michael Moriarty playing a lawman). LaPaglia's troubled, introspective crime lord who kills for strategic ends but never for personal anger looks amazingly like a cross between Robert DeNiro and Sam Waterston. Overall, FRANK NITTI: THE ENFORCER is nearly as subdued as its colors, but as gangster films go it is not all that far from being accurate. As a fan of this sort of film, I would say that FRANK NITTI: THE ENFORCER, with a 50-50 record for accuracy is far closer to being true than 99% of gangster films. And Frank Nitti, whom I have always claimed was misrepresented to the public, gets about the fairest shake from this film as any gangster ever gets from the movies. Rate it a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. Not bad for a made for TV movie.
Mark R. Leeper
ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
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