A different way of telling a story

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

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

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

if someone gave me a budget to make the worst movie there is, I can't do a better job, I must give the credit to the director. He should quit after directing this masterpiece. even if you tell me it's a comedy, this movie will get the same rating under any genre and here you can see the brilliance of the director to get all the audience of cinema to agree on one thing for the first time in history.The acting is high quality rubbish you can't find it in any place. the soundtrack will give the same effect even if you watch the movie in mute. they should use this movie in prison to convince criminals to tell the truth or they will get their true story told by this director.

The story of one of Detroit's most notorious criminals as told be the agent who investigated him. Vincent Pastore is on screen for about a minute playing a Midwesterner with a heavy Bronx accent--Hollywood short hand for how gangsters are supposed to sound regardless of the setting. "Jimmy Calone" also sounds like a stock character from New York although it takes place in Michigan. There's a half-baked subplot about a woman in love with a criminal and the usual thrown together clichés. Okay, so not many people would defend the "Street Boss" because of the crimes he was alleged to have committed. I will say this for the man. The movie made it seem like he had a problem with Jewish people. Well I'm here to tell you that I happen to be from Detroit and my Jewish cousin worked in his health club. He was treated very well. When getting a story such as this one you have to consider the source.

The Michigan film industry, which had produced such classics as Christopher Reeves' SOMEWHERE IN TIME, not to mention Otto Preminger's ANATOMY OF A MURDER (if you count the Upper Peninsula as part of Michigan, which I guess you have to if you consider Toledo part of Ohio) was destroyed nearly single-handed by Saginaw construction company scion Mark Bierlein (a middle-aged man with NO previous film credits), who fancied himself the next Sylvester Stallone and Kevin Costner rolled into one when he appointed himself producer, screenwriter, and balding schlub star of his own private spin on THE UNTOUCHABLES. (Besides pocketing beau coup bucks in state film credits, Bierlein was able to double dip through crane rental deductions.) Unlike ROCKY, Bierlein's FBI agent Phil Kerby does not beat the meat in the local walk-in freezer. Nor does he down five raw eggs in a glass of OJ. In lieu of these pursuits, he murders unarmed suspects, tosses wrongly suspected desk sergeants all over their office furniture, and combats Detroit's toughest Mafia boss with nothing more than a cold shower. The lone accomplishment of Jennifer Granholm, Michigan's eight-year Canadian-native governor, was to make her adopted U.S. foothold into Toronto South, in terms of tax-credit-supported film-making. But as soon as incoming local boy guv Rick Snyder saw the screener for STREET BOSS, he immediately curtailed such tax credits. "I'm just a bean-counting nerd," he told me at our barbershop the other day, "but even I know that starring a guy who looks like old Bierlein just so his family business can scam some tax dollars stinks to high heaven. What's that site you blog on . . . yes, IMDb, I bet this dog show will be lucky to get 500 ratings, and if it averages even 4 of 10, I'm a monkey's uncle. I've seen wooden Indians more animated than Mark Bierlein." I guess my guv 'bout said it all.

Sometimes, low budget mafia movies can be a pleasant surprise, 'This Thing Of Ours' springs to mind. I started out with reasonable hopes that 'Street Boss' would be a run of the mill mafia verses FBI story. Its based on true events, when the Boston mafia were toppled by exhaustive FBI pressure. The movie starts out with a familiar face to any mafia movie fan, probably best known as 'Big Pussy' from HBO hit series 'The Sopranos'. He's in the movie for about 15 seconds and it all goes down hill from that point on. The main FBI charchter is such a wooden actor its painful to watch, the soundtrack score is awful, and the editing and direction are a shambles. The whole thing is just plain rubbish. If your looking for low budget or TV movies about the mafia, try 'This Thing Of Ours', 'Gotti', or 'Boss Of Bosses' and leave 'Sreet Boss' alone, i regret having watched this trash.