Through a chance meeting in the street, our hero Billy Bathgate (Loren Dean) encounters and impresses the notorious 1930's gangster and bootlegger Dutch Schultz and even becomes his protégé.
Gangster films, like westerns, have so many cinematic plus points built in that making a totally duff one is pretty hard. This is a very professional piece of work, but hardly takes the genre to another level. One of the games you can play while watching is ticking of the clichés one-by-one.
(For the record the lead's poor mother - she works in a laundry - doesn't reject his "dirty" money, which I thought was compulsory in this type of movie, but most other must-haves are observed: The "surprise" summary execution and the chase through the period streets - to name but two - are both here!)
Dustin Hoffman is surpassingly good as a gangster who treats other people as collectable/disposable items. While he has a cold streak, you feel that only people that cross him are going to get the chop (one of whom is Bruce Willis - who looks like he took a small part to wear the clothes).
More ambiguous is his love (or is she?) interest Nicole Kidman who he seems to enjoy mentally torturing. I couldn't get a clear grip on her mentality or why she goes along with it all - not even for her own security reasons.
Dean is a good looking young actor who looks about ripe for corruption, but the role doesn't require him to be cool or knowledgeable merely look on as a witness, so that we can too. His attraction for Kidman, who seems to like casually undressing in public, is natural given that he is supposed to be a wide-eyed virgin.
Naturally hanging around with gangsters isn't a safe sport and soon Billy is in hot water that he has to think himself out of, but I think you can safely guess that what the final outcome will be.
Billy Bathgate is the work of solid pros from the script to the scenery (very believable 1930's NY), but the piece never reaches the heights and for long periods jogs along like a marathon runner conserving energy.
While delivering no fireworks or giving you anything new it gets you through to the end without being bored. Nevertheless it is hardly the type of film you would want to own or even sit through twice.
