If you're planning on writing a paper or doing research on Lester Gillis AKA George "Baby Face" Nelson then you might want to pass this one up. While the action is great and the leading man C. Thomas Howell is great as Baby Face Nelson, the movie is fiction based on fact. I hate it when they make a movie about a real person and then add fictional characters to the story or change names. I also hate it when they fabricate real life events. But I really hate it when they get the wrong man to play someone. In this case it was F. Murray Abraham and Martin Kove.
Where do they come off getting Martin Kove to play a legend like John Dillinger? It's also kind of ridiculous to get F. Murray Abraham to play Al Capone. They got him to play the part again in Dillinger and Capone. That's another movie that shows how they don't know how to cast actors. Both of these actors look nothing like who they're supposed to be. For Dillinger they pick a guy that doesn't look or sound anything like John Dillinger, or a gangster for that matter. Kove even has long reddish hair with a mustache that is way too thick to be Dillinger's. I know Dillinger was Irish, but give me a break. Maybe they didn't know what the real Dillinger looked like. The people that make these movies come off looking dumb because it shows how they do no research and know nothing about the subject they're making a movie on.
The only thing about this movie I could say that is perfect is the leading man. Howell saves this movie. Even though he is a little too handsome to be Baby Face Nelson he still passes as him. Even though C. Thomas Howell is 5' 11" and the real Baby Face Nelson was 5' 4" it doesn't matter because he still passes as him. C. Thomas Howell really makes you believe that he is Baby Face Nelson.
The scene with Al Capone telling Nelson to get out of town was made up. They went their own separate ways because Capone didn't like Nelson's methods for taking care of business. Nelson's tools of trade were a knife, a .32 caliber revolver, a Thompson Machine Gun, and a baseball bat. The guys he was supposed to be smacking around were turning up dead. Capone felt it was very bad for business. Capone didn't hit Nelson in the mouth a couple times and then throw him out of the car as shown here. They never even met and the one that really let him go was Jack McGurn. You are able to see Baby Face getting picked on as a kid, but true events are never shown. His childhood years, which were probably the years that turned him into a cold-blooded killer, are never shown here. You see him as a kid for probably 2 minutes. I can't understand why they didn't want to go into detail and show him grow up. In this movie he is the hero, but in reality he killed a hell of a lot of people. A lot of the people he kills in this movie are just asking for it though. Baby Face didn't always have a mustache, but from the moment you see him as an adult in this, he does. This movie really doesn't go into any detail and skips a lot of Nelson's life. It was a shame.
The final scene is very cool, but it is definitely not how things really went down before Nelson died. In real life Nelson was spotted driving a stolen car by 2 FBI agents. Let me also add that his wife and friend were in the car with him. They started to chase him. He pulled the car over and he immediately advanced on them. They were shooting him full of lead, but he kept moving forward and kept squeezing the trigger to his Thompson. Baby Face Nelson died later on after the shootout, but he took the two agents down with him. In this movie you see FBI agents surround him while he is trying to cross the Canadian border (I don't know where they get their information). The car turns over and he ends up crawling out with his wife and friend. By the way, his friend's name in this is Paul Chance. In real life, his friend's name was John Paul Chase. Instead of 2 agents there are about 10. There is a very big shootout. I kept waiting for Baby Face to say, "I've had enough of this cat-and-mouse!" I read that was what he said in real life when he went after the two G-Men. But he never does. He's yelling, "Come on, you yellow bellies!" He even says, "Smile, copper." The ending to this movie is still cool though. You are left with an action packed climax with a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid like ending. The protagonist of the movie goes out in a blaze of glory as he did in real life. A previous reviewer made it sound like FBI agents would never shoot an innocent person. At the time, they sure did. Just look at the shootout at Little Bohemia.
The bottom line is, if you want a movie that is about the life and times of George "Baby Face" Nelson then this movie is terrible. If you want a movie loosely based on Baby Face Nelson, this movie is good. Give the movie a try. This movie could've even better if it stuck to the facts. The true story was interesting and exciting.
