BUGSY
[Spoilers]
A film review by John Locke
Copyright 1992 John Locke
As it happened, I saw BUGSY the day after seeing THE ROCKETEER on laser disc. (The disc envelope quotes Siskel & Ebert: "Two thumbs up!" I suspect both thumbs belong to Gene. Either that, or Roger was extra tickled by his performance on THE ROCKETEER's "test your 1930s IQ" stuff.) The two films have superficial similarities. They're period pieces set in the same era. They also suffer from the same overall defect of yawn-daring pacing broken up unredeeming thrills. But at least THE ROCKETEER isn't pretending to be film art.
BUGSY ends with a tribute to kitsch, but the film itself is laced with bad poetry. Worst of all is the "death of Bugsy" scene. Bullets come flying through the window. Zing! Bugsy takes it right through the pump. Then we get a series of errant, albeit artistically profound shots. One takes out the cosmic chimney on the Flamingo Hotel model. Another blasts a hole through the screen playing Bugsy's lousy screen test. A third hits Virginia Hill's photo, shattering the glass. P.U.
Tearing a page from the book of amazing coincidences, Bugsy admits to his wife he wants a divorce as WWII has ended. Outside the celebrants are going crazy. The problem with the scene, besides its obvious cheap juxtaposition, is that it gets the order backwards. We find out Bugsy is ruining his wife's life, then we find out he's ruining V-J day for her. It mutes the effect of her sorrow.
Perhaps the worst scene, though, was the one in which the mob chieftains pay a visit while Bugsy is fixing his daughter's birthday cake. He bounces back and forth between his blood family and his crime family. The blood family quietly abandons hope and goes off to sulk. The problem is first their overreaction to a minor disturbance. Second, it's the screwed up pacing of the scene which prevents you from evaluating their reactions realistically. He only seems to be with the crime boys for a few minutes, but when we see the wife and kids it seems like hours are wiling away. The wife and kids are just puppets of the scene's requirement to illustrate Bugsy's neglect of his family.
The character of Virginia Hill is a major problem. What is she? She seems to be appalled by Bugsy's humiliation of Jack Dregna (stealing a famous scene from DELIVERANCE he is made to "oink like a pig"). But a minute later we find that she has gotten a giant sexual charge out of it. The film flatters her at every turn, so are we supposed to admire her strength in tolerating Bugsy's psychopathic temper? Or is she a psychopath, too? Later she is a virtual witness to Bugsy's murder of a mob informant that she has some affection for. She apparently keeps quiet about it, because when she remarks on it much later, it sounds like it has never been brought up before. Her silence in the face of evil is not admirable--she should have left Bugsy, at least--but the film struggles to keep her a sympathetic character by concentrating on her love and her loyalty to Bugsy, as if that was enough to define her. We buy into it, of course, and so when Bugsy is tipped off that Virginia has embezzled two million dollars, we know they are wrong. We can see that the purebred paranoia of these thugs is going to break up a great romance, against all justice. But then when we find out she did swipe the money and, even more unsettling, that she lied quite convincingly to Bugsy (and to us), the rug is pulled out from under her entire character. Was she ever more than an opportunist? What we bought into now looks more problematic. Yet the film, falsely, maintains the fiction, the touching parting scenes in which she says she embezzled the money for the both of them. Uh-huh.
Bugsy, apparently, is to be admired as a guy that gets things done. If that means cracking a few heads, so be it. We know that timid people never get anywhere. The carrot the film dangles before us is the Flamingo Hotel, being built in the Nevada desert by Bugsy's raw vision and a few carpenters. But there's no story there. We see Bugsy's superior judgement at work. The impractical architect does not even realize the pool will be shaded until Bugsy straightens him out. But then the pool is moved in the actual construction and another problem is created. You have to wonder whether Bugsy looked at the design, said "move the pool," and never looked at the design again. It's a fake predicament though more dramatic than attributing the cost overruns to the price of lumber. When the hotel opens we get another fake predicament. No guests show up. It's a bad piece of scripting. Our worst fears are perfectly, conveniently realized. Like Bugsy wouldn't have paid a crowd of extras to mug for the press. In the end, we're shown the contemporary Las Vegas skyline and told how much the Flamingo is now worth. The confirmation of Bugsy's brilliant vision. This must be pretty thrilling for the Sinatra worshippers. Is anyone under the age of sixty supposed to give a damn?
John .
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews