A Gary Oldman jag from True Romance. Ed Harris plays his older brother, Robin Wright his sister. Apparently she got organised with Sean Penn on the set.
This was another entry in the Irish-in-America genre, specifically Irish gangs in NYC's Hells Kitchen. (Others include Jim Sheridan's In America, all the Dennis Lehane adaptations, The Fighter and so forth. I guess they haven't been quite as successful as the Italians-in-America genre, which is a theme here.) Director Phil Joanou, working off a script by Dennis McIntyre, aims for some subtlety by having Penn return to the milieu of his youth: he's evolved but it hasn't, and during his absence once-and-future squeeze Wright has just gotten colder. (She's a complicated woman who ultimately conforms to Irish type by acting like blood is thicker than water while wanting nothing to do with her brothers for clear and obvious reasons.) Oldman is solid in a crazy violent alco role we've seen him do plenty of times. He drives an ancient decrepit yank tank that deserved its own billing. Harris is far better elsewhere.
The soundtrack was provided by Ennio Morricone and sounds like an interpolant of his music for Once Upon a Time in America and Lolita. There are elements of the former here. Everyone is so young. I couldn't help feeling that it was mostly resting on prior art. The inevitable ending struck me as Unforgiven's. The wonky band of brothers trope had more heft in Mystic River.
Roger Ebert: three stars. Oldman steals the movie. Eclipsed at release by Goodfellas. Janet Maslin: Mean Streets, The Godfather. So it's Scorcese-light.