Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

'Mean Streets (1973)' is seasoned with sprinklings of greatness, at times showing shades of what Scorsese would go on to do (i.e. 'Goodfellas (1990)'). Despite some solid acting throughout and a few entertaining sequences, though, the film generally falls flat thanks to the fact that there really isn't all that much of a plot and, as such, there isn't any real drama to latch onto. The result is a picture which feels much longer than it is and is also actually rather boring, floating along from set-piece to set-piece without any compelling connective tissue. It ends just as it seems to get going, too. 5/10

Glad Kognny Boy got what hd seserved in the end. Just wonder why he got help so long time when acting the way he did. Also wonder why he the wanna kill him and loose the money he owed. Shitty and disgusting movie where the filthy pkaces and nonsense dialogues is all over...everyehere. Must been made in like a month.

I've never been convinced that "Mean Streets" is a particularly good film. There has to be some kind of narrative structure or plot. This film has neither. It just rambles along aimlessly and nothing much happens either. "Mean Streets" was the first time Robert De Niro worked with Martin Scorsese. It's Harvey Keitel who dominates here, De Niro is more of a supporting character. I find it quite irritating and laughable that a bunch of Italian street punks go about thinking they are so tough! The truth is, they aren't. James Cagney and Spencer Tracy they aren't. The ending is quite predictable and boring.

If you find yourself frustrated that even as Johnny Boy keeps messing up Charlie still keep embracing and protecting him, Scorsese has succeeded. In more ways than one this is the rougher, meaner prototype of Goodfellas - but instead of glamourising the gangster lifestyle Scorsese plays it for what it is, and doesn't evoke any unnecessary personal growth. We see Charlie's catholic roots long before they thrust him into moral ambiguity and conflict, and we can immediately tell he has the a sort of intense responsibility for the members of his family that drive him to increasingly wave away their transgressions or faults. Even as they drive to what seems to be certain death, they are like a little family on a road-trip, laughing and joking with each other in the car as if nothing was wrong in the world. Scorsese has drawn on his own experiences of growing up in Little Italy to provide a rich canvas of characters and quarrels that unfold naturally within this world. While Goodfellas was immaculately structured with even freeze-frames to highlight define moments in the narrative, Mean Streets is polar opposite, with incidents and periods of inactivity peppering the anxious survival of Charlie's family and his aspirations in the Mafia. Fights might break out while you watch a show at the club. A man at the urinal might be shot in the back without notice. These acts of brutality and violence are heralded by an operatic score that gradually normalises their graphic nature. The real scare for Charlie is his off-cuff friend Johnny Boy, who makes his initial entrance into a hazy, crimson lit bar on the backdrop of The Rolling Stones' Jumpin' Jack Flash. The moment is magnified in the slow motion and Scorsese pushes into to the wary Keitel as if to say 'look here, trouble comes'. If his Catholicism hadn't already been compromised, it was now. Then he disappears for a good part of an hour and all we hear are whispers of his increasingly erratic behaviour, dodging loan sharks and spurning the lowly job that Charlie had worked so hard to get him. He finds him drunken on the roof and firing off shots into the night, and the piercing sound of the bullets is so effective because the rest of the soundtrack is silent - each pull of the trigger further ramps up the anxiety of Charlie desperately trying to reign him in. Keitel is so key; his increasing anger and indignation at each of Johnny Boy's missteps is underscored by this shame and regret as if it was all his fault. There is a scene where they trade blows on the staircase and where they finally come to blows, but like fighting brothers it all becomes okay the next day. And we see that although Charlie is not afraid to let the profanities fly, he knows that a little slap is going too far. He is like a father that spanks their child but immediately regrets it. He mouths off at Teresa, then right away looks as if he needs to run off and place his palm over a flame. His tough guy persona doesn't have any heart to it. There's a sort of awareness of the cinematic gangster that Scorsese shows with the handling of these characters. Whilst they fire guns and hustle guys all day long, they back away and up onto furniture to avoid getting near a caged lion. As Charlie becomes enchanted with the epileptic Teresa, he refrains from saying those three words because they represent sin and weakness and his uncle would forbid it. She replies with more smarts than expected: "Your reputation's safe", but it doesn't ever drag into self-conscious or affectionate territory. He knows, and she knows, that Mean Streets is all about reputation, and how it is undercut by other ideas like love and loyalty and family. They are not easily reconciled.