All the while as I was watching this, and especially during Gary Oldmans scenes...all I could see is Heath Ledgers inspiration for his Joker character. Sid Vicious is nothing next to Jackie. But I get why nobody talked about this movie...not now, not in the '90s. It came out at the same time as Goodfellas...it didn't stand a chance.

But man, Gary Oldman was all out. He really is one of the greats. And beside him so many other greats in this hidden gem from 30 years ago: Robin Wright, Ed Harris, Sean Penn, John Turturro, a young John C. Reilly. With a roster like this it really deserves a viewing. And the story in not bad either, it could have been tighter and a little more sophisticated but you can really follow it easily. Comparisons with Donnie Brasco and The Departed or Infernal Affairs are obvious but this one was before all of them. What does that tell you?

This is what happens when you have a great story but you don't have a great director. It is a forgotten film but remade by much better directors with a much tighter script, that is not so telegraphed.

Modern-day gangster drama involving Irish-American mobsters in New York's Hell's Kitchen District. Inspired by real characters, this tiresome film has good actors screaming and swearing at each other for over two hours. Dark and ugly throughout (with wonderful John C. Reilly dying in bloody close-up), the film may use 'real life' as a basis for its ideas, but Martin Scorsese is whom the filmmakers are trying to match. Director Phil Joanou muddies up everything; his vision is very puny and he doesn't shape the scenes with the characters in mind (they're incidental to how everything is staged vis-a-vis the camera). It's also a heavily-padded and clichéd picture: Robin Wright plays the proverbial girlfriend-from-the-right-side role (usually played in these things by Daryl Hannah or Lori Singer). *1/2 from ****