User reviews

It's 1935 NYC. Dutch Schultz (Dustin Hoffman) has Bo Weinberg (Bruce Willis) tied up. The movie flashes back to hustler Billy Bathgate (Loren Dean) on the streets. He ingratiates himself into Dutch's grace with his timely audacity. Dutch is a lead gangster. Otto Berman (Steven Hill) is his second in-command. Bo is his master fixer who can be trusted to do anything. Drew Preston (Nicole Kidman) is Bo's married girlfriend. Dutch is battling another gang as he grows suspicious of Bo. After Dutch kills Bo, he takes Drew as his. He has a trial in upstate New York and tries to win over the locals with his generosity.

There is something off-putting about Loren Dean portrayal of Billy Bathgate. He's a wide-eyed bland puppy who's always hanging around and listening. He lacks the needed intensity to lead a movie that has Dustin Hoffman acting up a storm. I imagine a modern version could be played by Eddie Redmayne who would give this role much needed energy. With Kidman bringing all of her damaged sexuality, Loren Dean brings the heat of a 12 year old boy. It's partly the character but mostly it's left on Loren's doorstep. How much of it is director Robert Benton's doing is hard to tell. This movie should be a lot better with so many great supporting actors involved.

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.

Billy Bathgate is really good gangster movie, but something is missing, Dustin is usual as ever, great Loren Dean performance, Nicole Kidman as marvelous in breathtaking scenes and surprisingly the unforgettable our hero in the past in Mission Impossible series Steven Hill on a very respectable and fine acting, almost unnoticed if didn't l used to read the opening credits, more helping the Lucky guy along the picture like a father, based in real facts on the thirties.

Resume:

First watch: 1996 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7.25

Billy 'Bathgate' Behan is a poor teenager in the 1920s that one day manages to capture the attention of Dutch Schultz (Dustin Hoffman) and enters his gang. He first sees two gruesome murders: first trusted Bo Weinberg (Bruce Willis) and Jules Martin, but Billy has a great opinion of Schultz and even considers him like a father. When Schultz has a trial for tax evasion, Billy is assigned to protect the former mistress of Weinberg, Drew Preston (Nicole Kidman) but ends up falling for her and even saves her calling her real husband and taking her home, and when Billy risks his death after Schultz and all his men die in a shootout, he is saved by none other than Lucky Luciano (Stanley Tucci).

I was curious about this movie for years because of the cast and the subject, and while I didn't found it excellent I still liked it. The cast is full of many known faces (Hoffman, Willis, Kidman, Tucci, Mike Starr, Steve Buscemi, Frances Conroy) and they all do a nice job, the 1920s style is captured well and the movie never fails to entertain. Need to say more? Nah.

Some review comments about it having an "abrupt ending" were peculiar since the ending was HISTORICAL. The chop house shooting happened. The characters could have been drawn better, much better, especially regarding motivations. Perhaps this is why people were left unsatisfied at the ending; they didn't care about the characters. A major reason for that is the lead title character was completely forgettable. Yes, Nicole Kidman struts around stark naked; you'll see more of her here than in "Eyes Wide Shut". (She's really a little too thin). If you stumble across the movie check it out; better yet, read the book.

"Billy Bathgate" charts the seemingly charmed path of a resourceful street kid (Loren Dean) who latches on to the Dutch Shultz gang in Dewey-era New York City. Shultz (Dustin Hoffman) has a gang which has seen the zenith of its power; its fighting to hold his place in a world where Irish and Italian politicians and mobsters are on the ascendancy. The movie opens with an initial act of betrayal, and the moll (Nicole Kidman) is thrust upon both the man and the boy. The movie is blessed with strong performances by secondary characters played by Steven Hill, Steve Buscemi, Stanley Tucci, Bruce Willis, and a number of other actors whose faces you know but might not be able to name.

Amazing because unbelievable. But it is true Billy has to survive since he is telling the story, or rather the story is told from his point of view. He is the voyeur, the camera, the stalker, the witness, etc, and the film is shot through his own eyes. The pleasure is essentially in the acting. This movie is always told through the eyes of Billie & his gangland tutor played by Steven Hill of Law & Order fame, just one fine acting job. Some claim Hoffman is so powerful here he overshadows the rest of the cast but I think that's shallow-sighted. Dutch Schultz was a overpowering man & only those that were able to subjugate themselves in his presence survived for long. That makes the other portrayals dead accurate & earns those actors & actresses their own deserved praise for this show.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

The big screen adaptation of E. L. Doctorow's novel shows impressive credentials and handsome production values; so why is the finished film so inert? Is it because the story itself, about a fresh-faced Bronx kid who, during the Depression, learns the hard facts of criminal life from mobster Dutch Schultz (and falls for the boss' girlfriend) is so familiar? Could it be the abrupt, anti-climactic ending to the film's clever hopscotch structure? Or is it because the movie is too much about Billy (played by clean-cut newcomer Loren Dean, a throwback to pre-Touchstone Disney) and not his psychotic mentor? No evidence is visible of the much publicized production problems other than a few scenes where dialogue was obviously overdubbed, but the film still looks as if it were made under duress. A strong supporting cast, and Dustin Hoffman's exciting performance as the vulgar Dutch, are saving graces.

Billy Bathgate is based on E.L. Doctorow's historical novel about New York in the Thirties. Doctorow also authored Ragtime and while this film isn't as gaudy and expensive as Ragtime, Billy Bathgate is an accurate recreation of the times of post Prohibition New York City.

The main reason to see Billy Bathgate is the mesmerizing performance of Dustin Hoffman as Arthur Fleigenheimer better known as Dutch Schultz. It's a harrowingly accurate portrayal of Schultz who was every bit the hot tempered homicidal maniac Hoffman shows him as. It's very much along the lines of Vic Morrow's performance as Schultz in Portrait of a Mobster, but Hoffman is better. If you do a search on the web about Schultz and see a film, you'll find Dustin Hoffman looks quite a lot like him in real life.

The film is seen through the eyes of its title character who is a young man from the Bronx played by Loren Dean. Schultz reigned supreme in the Bronx of the Jimmy Walker early Fiorello LaGuardia days. One can't forget that this was the Depression, there were no jobs to be had for young Billy of Bathgate Avenue and his gang. It's the reason we see them hanging around on the subway tracks outside Schultz's headquarters when Billy's juggling act catches the Dutchman's attention.

Doctorow is true to gangland lore about why and how Schultz was done in. As you watch Hoffman's performance, these sudden fits of violence you can certainly understand why Lucky Luciano wanted to rid themselves of this problem.

Part of Schultz's temper might have been bedroom performance. As heiress Nicole Kidman so aptly puts it to Billy, he's quite an ordinary man your Mr. Schultz. Also look for some really good performances in this excellent cast from Steven Hill as numbers cruncher Otto Berman, Tim Jerome as lawyer Dixie Davis, and Bruce Willis as the luckless Bo Weinberg. Kidman's not bad either as the immoral heiress who has affairs with gangsters for kicks.

But Billy Bathgate really belongs to Dustin Hoffman, it's one of his best screen performances and should not be missed by anyone especially fans of Dustin.

An excellent movie about gangsters without being bored. A cast of actors simply amazing, with the beautiful Nicole Kidman more beautiful than ever. Unlike Godfather, here we see the mafia world through the eyes of a street kid who wants fame and money.

In the Godfather movie, all the characters are already on top, it does not show how they arrived and they are almost invincible to either the government, the police or rival gangs. Here the mob has to work hard. Violence is just right and the nudity scenes are very well done. A nudity scene always improves the movie in question. The action is also very good, here there is no place for annoyance. A movie that I like a lot, I have in Blu ray and I recommend it.

This film can't make up its mind what it wants to be. Ostensibly it's about the 1930s gangster Dutch Shultz. However, the story predominantly rotates around the romance between Kidman and Deans characters. Yet it doesn't really sufficiently deal with either the romance or the life of Schultz. Neither does Schultz or the romance act as a secondary story to the other. So the movie loses out by not knowing what it is.

I have been a Doctorow fan for a long time and have read most of his works. His book Billy Bathgate was given to me for a Christmas present and I read it three times in a few months. I had not seen the film but, again, I got it for a Christmas present this year. While I enjoyed the film the book was still fresh on my mind and I found, while a lot of the story was adhered to, the ending in the film was not as satisfactory as the book. It seemed to 'fizzle out' when I was expecting the final ironic twist in the tale. Also because the story is quiet complex I would expect that viewers who had not read the book might find the film a little bewildering. Loren Dean was certainly not up to the titular role - he just didn't seem to be a credible character and looked almost bemused by what was going on around him; in reality, I mean, not as the character. Dustin Hoffman was good as Schultz but did not have enough to do. Steve Hill as Otto, one of the important characters in the book, was excellent. Enjoyable with reservations. If you haven't, you must read the book.

BILLY BATHGATE isn`t a bad film , and takes the trouble to show us the young and impressionable title character attraction towards the criminal underworld , a world where money and molls come easily to hand . It`s also slightly old fashioned and you can imagine Edward G Robinson or James Cagney playing the part of Dutch Schultz and that`s where the problem lies - Dustin Hoffman , who is a fine actor but I found him too laid back and since THE GODFATHER we don`t expect mafia dons to be laid back , we expect them to be played By Pacino and DeNiro and see them throw things around and shout " My family " a lot . But worse still BILLY BATHGATE was released after a certain cinema masterpiece that featured Joe Pesci as a psycho hitman who never uses sentences unless the F word appears in every second word which means every gangster pic from the same era pales in comparison . So if you`re going to watch BILLY BATHGATE judge it on its own merits because the performances are good enough as is the story , it`s just that I kept hearing a voice in my head saying " I`m a funny guy ? Just what is so f***ing funny ? " while I was watching

I went to this mob film with my dad. My girl friend was working and my dad jumped at the oportuinity, because my dad loves mob movies and my mom hates them. The surpirse in this film is Nichole Kidman poses nude. I believe she would do anything to be famious, and being early in her carrier before she met Tom she did it. I do not think we will ever see her do that again. The film starts out well with Bruce Wills in his cameo, but the rest is your run of the mill 20's mob story. Hoffman plays Dutch perfectly, and I like the small antics. The ending is great with Andy Garcia playing the leaning meaner Scillians who become tops in the food chain. Great moment but not a great film. 6/10

The film never really builds up to much, save some surprisingly violent scenes. With only two actors really showing off any skill (Buscemi and Hoffman) the film often seems a bit cardboard like. As for the 'abrupt' ending, there isn't really one, although the ending does seem a bit crappy as Bill Bathgate couldn't be so lucky that he manages to a: walk out just before the shootout. b: have $17,000 given to him just before he got grabbed. Lucky man my ass, if this is a true story.

While hanging out with friends in 1935 New York City, Prohibition-era poor Loren Dean (as Billy "Bathgate" Behan) notices notorious gangster Dustin Hoffman (as Arthur "Dutch Schwartz" Flegenheimer) doing his dirty work. After admiring Mr. Dean's ability to juggle four balls, Mr. Hoffman gives the younger man a job with the mob. Dean begins by sweeping the floor, but is quickly promoted to keeping smoking hot girlfriend Nicole Kidman (as Drew) satisfied under the sheets...

One of the problems with "Billy Bathgate" is that Dean appears as a fully grown man who is being treated, and often acts, like he's a 14-year-old kid. Sometimes he is made to appear shorter and younger, but it's really a lost cause. Consequently, the scenes with Dean and the other men seem silly. And, even on his own, top-billed Hoffman's character registers nothing but ugly.

Dean is more convincing with Ms. Kidman, who has a brief "full frontal" moment after a swim. A highlight is the "Saratoga" horse-racing sequence, with Dean, Kidman and Steve Buscemi (as Irving). Kidman has a husband (Xander Berkeley) who likes to unbutton a man's shirt on the couch, and another (Bruce Willis) who gets to try on a pair of Hoffman's cement shoes...

***** Billy Bathgate (11/1/91) Robert Benton ~ Loren Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Steven Hill

***SPOILERS*** Truth and fiction are mixed into the movie "Billy Bathgate" and the results comes out like an upside-down cake; totally confusing. At the beginning of the film see Bo Weinberg, Bruce Willis, on his way to go the sleep with the fishes, deep sixth-ed, for something that he did to hurt his boss Dutch, Arthur Fegenheimer, Schultz (Dustin Hoffman). We never really find out what Bo did to deserve the fate awaiting him if he did anything at all since we have to take Bo's word that he's somehow been framed and is totally innocent of the charges that Dutch accuses him of.

Shipped out to sea with a pair of cement shoes Bo gives us this cock and bull story about how he was the reason for Dutch's amazing success as a big time hoodlum and now with him about, or be made, to check out for good Dutch's days will be numbered as both the Feds the State Special Prosecutor, Tom Dewy, as well as his fellow hoods will put an end to him. It's here that we get to see Billy Bathgate, Loren Dean, who together with Schultz's top hit-man Irving, Steve Buscemi, are to do in Bo by dropping him, cement shoes and all, overboard.

The movie goes into a series flashback showing how Billy got to know and become a member of Schultz's gang. The flashbacks are so badly mishandled that for a time you don't really know if you either in the past or the present. We don't even realize that Bo was done in, by drowning, until more then half way into the movie and even worse we don't get any solid information at all to why he was done in by Schultz in the first place! The only thing that Schultz was reported to be trying to do was make a deal with a rival hoodlum but were not told what it had to do with Bo!

It's later found out by Billy from the late Bo's girlfriend Drew, Nicole Kidman, that one night at a party with Bo, as she was almost out cold from drinking, she saw him with this guy Lucky Luciano, Stanley Tucci. Luciano's a mobster that Schultz's is allied with but all this came out after Bo was put on ice and even if, the Schultz-Luciano meeting, came out when he was still alive and breathing what did it exactly mean to Schultz anyway? Schultz was Luciano's partner in crime and even more important why would anyone believe someone like Drew who was admittedly dead dunk at the time of her supposedly seeing both Bo and Lucky together?

Schultz is shown in the movie as he really was in real life a trigger-happy and murderous psychotic and Hoffman's portrayal of him is right on target. The rest of the cast is just wasted in this movie by the silly lines and roles that their given. Drew is slated to be hit by Schultz because she knew that he had her boyfriend,Bo, murdered even though she was nowhere near the murder scene. Billy who was not only at the scene of Bo's murder but also participated in it is somehow left alive by the grateful Dutchman?

The hit on Drew was decided to take place at the Saratoga racetrack with Irving given the honors to do the job. Billy who was having an affair with Drew and knew about her forthcoming demise does everything possible to prevent her execution and calls her closet gay husband Harvey, Xander Berkeley, back in New York City to come over and rescue her.

It turns out that Harvey is a big shot in both city and state government and murdering his wife would bring the entire wrath of the state district attorney's office right on top of Schultz's head. All that keeps, together with Billy running interference for her at the track, Drew from being hit as she and Harvey leave the racetrack and fly back to NYC. With Schultz supposedly knowing all this about her and her husband Harvey Why then was Drew to be hit in the first place? Was it that Irving and the rest of the Schultz Gang were somehow ignorant of this very important and public fact, Drew's husband having power and influence, when Dutch put the hit on her?

"Billy Bathgate" also has to do with Schultz's legal problems with both the Feds and the State's Special Prosecutor Tom Dewey. Schultz, with the help of his lawyers, gets a change of venue for his trial on income tax evasion out of New York City to some obscure upstate town where he puts on an act as a nice guy. A person that you wound't mind inviting over to your house to have a couple of beers with.

Despite losing it and blowing away one of his associates Julie Martin, Mike Starr, for skimming off his hard earned cash Schultz's get's off the hook by a friendly jury verdict of not-guilty. Still it's that annoying prosecutor Tom Dewey who refuses to be paid off by Schultz to drop his case since Dewy is planning to run for governor of New York and later president. And in him putting the Dutchman behind bars may well be the feather in Dewy's cap that would get him elected: Dewy in fact wasn't losing both to FDR and later Harry Truman in the 1944 and 1948 presidential elections.

Determined to stop the now crazy Dutchman from killing Dewy Luciano ordered him and his gang members to be hit in a Newark stake-house. The irony of Luciano preventing Dewey from being murdered by Schultz's mobsters was that the next year Luciano himself was busted by Dewy for running a prostitution ring. That eventually lead to Luciano being deported back to his home in Italy as an undesirable alien. History has a strange way of straightening things out doesn't it.

Many Hollywood movies have glorified the gang violence of the Prohibition era, so if you like that niche genre, you're going to want to rent Billy Bathgate. A young kid, Loren Dean, idolizes the extremely powerful and cold-hearted gangster Dustin Hoffman. At first, all he sees is Dusty's power and respect "on the streets" but the audience sees the danger lurking in that type of life. As Loren gets more involved in the gangster world, he witnesses horribly violent acts, but he's still enticed by the money, power, and the potential to steal Dusty's girlfriend, Nicole Kidman. Do you think that might not be a good idea?

If you're watching this movie for Bruce Willis, you might want to rent something else. He's not the lead, and his scenes are pretty upsetting. While this isn't the goriest gang movie to come out of Hollywood, there is still one scene I haven't been able to extract from my memory, and it involves Bruce Willis. I didn't end up liking this movie because it was too violent for my taste, but I understand why others have remembered it more fondly.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to violence and nudity, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

It's kind of shocking to see less than 20 reviews (as of March, 2006) for a movie that stars Dustin Hoffman and Nicole Kidman and also has Bruce Willis and Loren Dean.

This story of gangster "Dutch" Schultz is told, like the beginning of Goodfellas, through the eyes of a young guy (Dean) who breaks into the business, so to speak. Probably in this case, he was more attracted to Kidman than the business, and who could blame him?

Dean was a complete no-name at the time and is a fine actor. Hoffman plays the crude Schultz and Kidman is his immoral wife. For some people, this film is remembered for quick full frontal nudity shots of Kidman. The most interesting person in the film, I thought, was Schultz' lawyer/confident Otto Berman, played by Steven Hill. Willis also helps make up a good cast, but his role is short.

For a gangster/action flick, there wasn't a lot of violence in here and I liked the period detail. It looks nice, especially on DVD. One downfall on some of these modern-day films: there isn't one morally upright character in the story and the filmmakers make Dean and Kidman into sympathetic figures. Overall, however, a good crime movie.

A very forgettable film, except for one scene of the luminous Nicole Kidman as only husband Tom Cruise gets to see her. Wow!!