1st watched 4/27/2001 - 3 out of 10(Dir-Richard C. Sarafian): Slow-moving supposedly fact-based story of real gangsters ranging from Lucky Luciano to Al Capone with almost everyone in between. The focus is on Luciano(played by Michael Nouri) and his friends Bugsy Siegel and Michael Lasker(who is a fictional character). It's hard to believe that these people who just wanted to be in the bootleg business turned into what they became. This I think is where the movie fails. We don't believe the actors, and we don't see any pain that these people went thru in any of their relationships. Most of the characters are played without emotion, even in their bedrooms. The hard part is believing that so many people had the same response. The police are not even present in this film(Do we believe that goodness didn't exist in these settings?). If this truly is the way life was, I'm sure glad I didn't live in New York or Chicago during these times.
