Get Carter (1971)

I am supposed to love “Get Carter,” the gritty Brit mob flick about a London enforcer (Michael Caine) going home to north England to kill the bastards who popped his connected brother. And, damn it, Caine is friggin’ brutal bad ass in the role, swinging a woman into bed or swinging a rifle into another man’s skull. But I just could not get into this film, directed by Mike Hodges – who made “Pulp” with Caine, and later “Flash Gordon.” So, I didn’t get “Carter.” There are too many trite names –- Alexes and Allans and Alberts –- and too many scenes where Caine’s Carter has to drive someone palace to meet some guy to talk about another guy he has to go drive to and see and talk some more. And, hey, did Carter even like his brother? No. A gangster film should be watched leaned in, eyes ready for the next blast of violence, not spent studying the bloke under the shepherd’s cap wondering, Now who’s he? The ending, though, knocks you back into the seat. If only all that came previous were as direct. B-

The Family (2013)

Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer play husband and wife in the comedy-drama “The Family” which follows a mob-connected clan unable to keep their New Yawk F.U. attitude in check while living in rural France under witness protection. Dad pummels a shady plumber with a hammer, mom blows up a grocery for its lack of peanut butter, while the children (Dianna Argo and David Belle) pull of blackmail and crush anyone who crosses them. Tommy Lee Jones, haggard and grouchy as always, plays the haggard and grouchy U.S. federal agent who has to keep the family safe from assassins. See, De Niro’s dad snitched his mafia bosses and is now wanted. Director Luc Besson -– he made “The Professional” –- eyes slapstick comedy upfront, and drama and suspense later, asking us to sympathize with these hard-ass ’Mericans when the guns come. It’s an ugly shift: We’re not talking Bernstein Bears here. This family proudly dishes cruelty, yet when tables turn, suddenly violence is wrong? (Never mind the high body count of innocents.) Love the “Goodfellas” bit, though. B-

Stand Up Guys (2013)

It’s a kick to see Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Alan Arkin play off each other in “Stand Up Guys,” a comedy about aging gangsters who can still -– as stated repeatedly -– kick ass or chew gun, and no one has any gum. That joke gets repeated. Our three acting gods make it work. Mostly. What they cannot save is the stick a needle in a hard cock joke, which De Niro already suffered through with Ben Stiller. And not even Brando in his prime could save the WT-holy-F gang rape victim bit which has the trio finding a bound, gagged, and naked assault victim in the trunk of a car they have stolen. Get her to the hospital? Is she traumatized? Injured? No. Our heroes take the lady out for dinner, find the perps, and layout violent justice, hooting and hollering along the way. Seriously. Really. Actor-turned-director Fisher Stevens is so busy making these guys woo-ha cwazzy that he never makes them dangerous, so much so that not even the notion of Walken’s assassin being forced to kill Pacino’s crook makes a slight dent. Irony: Despite the deluge of dick jokes, “Guys” has no balls. C+

The Black Hand (1950)

Unusually bleak for 1950s Hollywood rah-rah American films, “The Black Hand” opens in 1900’s Little Italy, New York, as a local attorney/doting father and husband is killed for daring to cross the Italian mob. The attorney’s teenage son -– a strapping with a thick Italian accent who could pass for young Brando -– vows revenge, and delivers eight years later after he returns to New York in the bodily form of 40-year-old Gene Kelly. A man as Italian as I am not. If you can get past that, this is a damn good film that takes head-on the disappointment of the American Dream for thousands of immigrants as they lived (and do still) under the thumb of petty thug dictators who hold more power and sway than the police or courts. There’s no “Singin’ in the Rain” here. In full dramatic mode singed with anger, Kelly pulls a knife on a guy for information and wields the dagger late in the film for more permanent deeds. Director Richard Thorpe (he later made “Jailhouse Rock”) makes the film feel authentic and lets Italians speak Italian for long periods, no subtitles, and takes the gritty, dark action to Naples. Seriously, Kelly is eccellente. A-

The Untouchables (1987) and Gangster Squad (2013)

Double bill: Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” with Elliot Ness versus Al Capone, and “Gangster Squad,” with L.A. cops against Mickey Cohen. Both are true cops-and-mobs stories repainted with Hollywood final blowout action scenes. Why allow Frank Nitti his suicide when Ness can toss him off a building? “Squad” plays looser with truth. 

Such is film. Facts hit the floor faster than bodies. In 200 words, my take downs on these mob take-down films.

“Untouchables” –- also based on the rah-rah TV show – follows Eagle Scout/U.S. Treasury agent Ness (Kevin Costner) as he brings in three like-minded heroes (Sean Connery as wise old cop, Andy Garcia as hothead cop, and Charles Martin Smith as nerd cop) to nail Robert De Niro’s Capone. Smart casting and smart-looking film. 

It smells of Chicago and spent bullets. De Palma and screenwriter David Mamet put us in gorgeous locales -– trains station, courthouses, and filthy red alleyways. Dialogue pops like spent lead: Connery barking about knives at a “gun party” is classic. 

I was 13 in ’87 and this became my Instant Favorite Film. The violence, male bravado, scope, and that shoot-out on the stairs. It’s a stellar cops-and-gangsters fantasy for… teenage boys. I’m wiser now, and the red-blood love has waned. This is a sloppy-ass film riddled with dubious continuity errors -– moving corpses, that wondering elevator in the assassination scene, a terrible voice dub throughout, and logic tossed aside in a courtroom finale. Too many scenes make me cringe. 

Was De Palma so in love with his own (admittedly great) style, he forgot the importance of details? Hell if I know. Costner is too fantastic to care. B+

“Squad” whiffs fake as “Untouchables” feels immersed in Chicago lore. You can smell the wet paint. I read Ellroy. Call me biased. Josh Brolin is WWII Army Special Forces vet John O’Mara, now a cop assigned to stop New York-bred Cohen (Sean Penn) from becoming the West Coast Capone.

O’Mara is very Ness to the point I believe writer Will Beall watched “Untouchables” on repeat. Lines are lifted whole. O’Mara also has his three heroes: Robert Patrick as wise old cop, Ryan Gosling as hothead cop, and Giovanni Ribisi as nerd cop. Toss in retro-progression with Anthony Mackie as a black patrolman and Michael Pena as a Hispanic flatfoot named Navidad. (Cringe.) 

Plot: O’Mara’s guys shoot the shit out of Cohen’s guys, who do the same back. Penn is comically spittle-tossing evil, his performance falls into hysterics. I laughed my ass off when a ridiculously dickensesque shoeshiner gets whacked. I gather director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) wasn’t going for giggles among the blood and rape. 

As Ness says, “You aren’t from Chicago.” Do not pretend. C

Looper (2012)

In “Looper,” director/writer Rian Johnson (“Brick”) takes the worn idea of time travel and renews it, not just with vigor, wit, and head-turning suspense, but strong characters that act in ways never touched on before -– suicide. Well, not exactly suicide as we know it.

Joseph Gordon Levitt (“Inception” and also “Brick”) plays Joe, a hit man who kills mafia castoffs delivered from 30 years in the future where time travel is possible but illegal. Crazy? Don’t mind it. Joe is known as a Looper because, literally, one day he must execute himself, his older late-50s self. Close the loop. Get it?

The scratch in this time trick: Old Joe turns out to be a vengeance-seeking raging pissed-off man-of-action embodied by Bruce Willis in full “Die Hard” mode, ready to hunt and kill a mysterious young boy who decades later will become an evil Keyzor Soze-like crime boss that will ruin Joe’s — both Joes — life. (A day without referencing “The Usual Suspects” is a day wasted.)

This is trippy, shocking story-telling, and Johnson dares play his hand wide open by admitting onscreen that time travel is pure bunk, a mind screw that is best left unraveled, and then he stomps the gas hard for go, non-stop. He also goes “meta” by having Young Joe’s mafia boss (Jeff Daniels) sulk around as the world’s laziest mobster, opting for PJs over clothes, but able to pop off dark and violent when his underlings fail.

Best bits: Daniels as this mob boss denounces Young Joe’s motives as a hit man who has watched too many movies about hit men, and then Johnson goes onto practically film and his cast act out a full-on worship sequence of mafia hit man classic “Goodfellas.” Time is not just twisted here, but the world of movies, inside and out, is tweaked and turned on its head. Also up for debate grabs: The effects of child abuse, loveless parenting, and how we change — and in many ways remain stunted — as we age. Heavy, wonderful stuff all around.

Johnson scores a knockout, too, because his cast, writing, emotion, and the action are all stellar. Levitt -– under makeup -– makes a believable Willis. All the junk on his face is off-putting at first, but Levitt moves beyond it, and the story is so strong, such complaints fall by the way side. I’ll take occasional makeup mishaps any day over a plot-empty, CGI-drunk stinker such as “Battleship.” I thought “Brick” far too clever for its own good, setting a film noir mystery in a high school. It never earned the raves. This does, easily so.

Also, check out Paul Dano of “There Will be Blood,” playing a fellow hit man who meets a horrifying fate right out of the nastiest episode of “Twilight Zone” ever imagined, but never filmed. More so than even Levitt, Dano is an actor we’ll be talking about decades from now as the best of his generation, his and our time. A-