Mean Streets

Martin Scorsese has always been able to give his key films an incredibly cool atmosphere. He managed to do the same with this unassuming gangster film. However, you have to play along with its game to really enjoy it, as the story unfolds through smoky bars, streets full of strange characters, or restaurants where cunning mobsters sit. So the setting is exactly to my cinematic taste. When I add in the charismatic Harvey Keitel and the slightly insane Robert De Niro, I know the only thing else it needed was to thicken the plot a bit and I would have been paying endless tribute to Marty. (15/06/2007)

It's not yet the Scorsese we know from Casino or The Departed, but there's already a hint of the precise and groundbreaking filmmaker who would define the crime genre for the next 40 years. The master outlines the relationships and status among gangster "nobodies" in a way that is very patient and typical for the seventies, incorporating into the story classical music, the gloomy New York setting and mafia dens full of dirty money and scantily dressed girls. Most importantly, he begins his collaboration with De Niro and Keitel, his acting stalwarts, who both give great and believable performances. I probably made the mistake of watching this lesser known work after all the other and more famous gems Scorsese has made, and it was difficult to appreciate its quality given the expectations. But I still liked it and I will surely watch it again. For the time being, 70%. (23/01/2013)

Not very much happens. Marty filmed a great filler with a couple of brighter moments. Excellent actors, Johnny Boy De Niro was most impressive and a surprisingly posh Harvey Keitel also does a good job. But so what, if the excellently written dialogs don’t have a powerful result. This is simply a prelude to Scorsese’s later, more fundamental movies. (29/12/2011)

A naturalistically dirty routine of good-for-nothings, rubberneckers, brokes, dandies and wannabe gangsters who only shop at bargain stores. It is based purely on situations, spontaneity (often it seems like improvisation), atmosphere and characters, it is not about a story. After all, except for a kind of digression about Johnny's debts, there isn't one. Although with reservations (self-serving slowdowns, paper-rusting internal monologues), it works even today and not only as a "supplementary material FYI", which would work purely in the level of the the movies it draw inspiration from like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas or Casino. (20/11/2017)

Martin Scorsese’s understated warm-up before his major projects (Goodfellas, Casino). Though his later works are more opulent and visually refined, Mean Streets definitely does not lag behind in terms of storytelling or portrayal of the characters. The perfect Harvey Keitel as a good-natured and decent gangster in training who protects and sticks up for his friend, an irresponsible fool played by Robert De Niro. De Niro, in a smaller role than Keitel, gives a delectably eccentric performance. An honest gangster movie filled with love for the dirty streets of New York and their vivacious inhabitants. (13/11/2017)