Mafioso a la fuerza

An unfunny comedy with a silly premise that moves arbitrarily from situation to situation with little or no regard for narrative sense. In short, a quintessential product of the incompetent school of filmmaking.

I won't bother with the story or character details, since they don't make much sense anyway. At points, the characters suddenly appear in some new setting and situation, with no clue where they are or how they got there. In some cases, the filmmakers apparently tried to correct this after completing the main shooting, adding some voice-over dialogue on top of exterior shots by way of exposition.

The comic and dramatic situations are hackneyed, contrived and unconvincing. The dialogue is uninteresting and unnatural. Some scenes seem to have been improvised (I mean that in a bad way). From time to time, it looks like there was no script for a scene, just "the characters argue about something, then stop."

This has a great cast, and a great premise, but unfortunately, Chris Kattan already did this, and did it BETTER! Unperceived family ties drag a young man into the gangster life. Unfortunately, this is pretty lame, in spite of the fantastic cast. What a monumental waste of real talent! Every possible stereotypical Sicilian mob element possible has been brought into this production, but instead of making the individual components work, it flooded the story line with unnecessary "Italianizations;" most of them ineffectual and out of place, clashing with one another, and rendering scene after scene nearly unwatchable.

Sorry, but I didn't derive much pleasure from this, at all. If you want a good mobster/comedy, please do yourself a favor and check out Corky Romano. While it's no masterpiece, it's light years ahead of this.

It rates a 3.8/10 from...

the Fiend :.

My mom is a semi fan of Christopher Walken and this appealed to her I guess though I am usually baffled by what she picks up when I let her choose a movie to watch. I too like Christopher Walken and also so saw on the box that Nacy Allen was in it. I love her from her Brian De Palma days and the Robocop film series. So I went with it and watched this movie. Little did i know that Michael Rapperport would turn out to be the star of the film. I can take Rapperport in small doses like, True Romance, Bamboozled and Hitch. But a whole movie surrounding him, naw can't handle that, unfortunately I was forced too. Because if I give my Mom crap about watching stupid movies like this she will in-turn gripe at me for making her watch good movies like Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, so I this is how i'm forced into watching crap like this. My mom will never learn. The film however has only one saving grace and that is the appearance of Chris Walken as the second in charge of a mob family. Nancy Allen on the other hand has so little screen time it is a wonder she was involved with the film at all. She must have owed someone a favor. Avoid this film at all cost unless you are a Chris Walken completest.

Ok, for starters, I live in Toledo, Ohio. No-I'm not going to go into one of those righteous rants about how much better my city is, personally I don't care that much..but COME ON! It didn't even look like Toledo...all the high rises were wrong and our downtown area doesn't have cute little Italian family eateries, it's dilapidated and dirty. For the most part suburbia is in Maumee. Also, the mobsters from Detroit were totally unbelievable, and I hate to say that because I love Christopher Walken. I thought maffioso's had to be fairly intelligent... To be nice-Living in Ohio isn't the same as being retarded. We have our share, but really! Rent at your own risk, better yet, wait until it comes on network tv.

There are far, far worse movies out there. For a mobster movie with less intensity than the standards, this is a lot of fun.

Michael Rappaport is (as always) excellent, and this film offers one of the few opportunities we've had to see Christopher Walken in a less-than-terrifying role.

Sure, the film meanders a bit, has little poignancy, and, in the end, is mostly forgettable...but it's also a bit off the beaten path and is worth a rental, especially for an evening where you just don't want to bother with another lackluster Hollywood Blockbuster.