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)

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)

I have a little problem with Martin Scorsese. His older movies are not fun for me, even though I consider his newer ones some of the best flicks there are. I’m such a heathen that I gave Taxi Driver and Raging Bull three stars, and I will do the same with Mean Streets. In this case mainly because it’s so boring. Well, boring might be too strong a word. It’d be safer to say that the story is not as captivating as other mafia crime movies, failing to make me give it 100% of my attention while watching it. (22/01/2013)

In the film, it is evident that Scorsese was still exploring the world of cinema. His potential was apparent, and a social atmosphere of the 70s emerged on the screen - racism, the Vietnam War, minority integration, etc. The film follows the story of a foot soldier for the mafia who works as a collector for his influential uncle. He is not cut out for the job, not tough enough, but a family business is a family business, and being loyal pays off. Mean Streets lacks coherence, better character development, and work with them. The story is diluted into a chain of loosely connected scenes from the lives of the lower ranks of the mafia. It is nice to see the young faces of De Niro and Keitel, whom I had fixed as older guys from movies made 20 years later. The film itself, however, is only a slightly above-average affair. Overall impression: 60%. (25/01/2013)

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)