One of the major knocks against this film when it was released was the amount of unfaithfulness to the truth throughout the movie.
Despite many liberties taken against the historical record of what occurred and a number or made-up scenes that are hard to fathom, the movies tries at times to follow close to what was known at the time but the lack of attention to detail keeps getting in the way.
Beatty does a great job acting in the film and his chemistry with his future wife Annette Bening is something to behold.
I don't mind so much that Beatty is about 15 years older than Siegel was during these years but it's more upsetting that Virginia Hill (Benings character) is portrayed as a street tough city girl when she was a street tough country girl from Alabama.
Mickey Cohen was in his early 30s but is portrayed as a hardened criminal in his late 40s to early 50s. Also the background story on his relationship with Siegel is tangled up here.
The movie does drag on at times and there are some absurd scenes which never would have happened.
Beatty is at his best playing the family man - his charisma carries the picture but they couldn't even get the ending to be accurate historically which kind of defeats the purpose of making a biopic movie.
Despite many liberties taken against the historical record of what occurred and a number or made-up scenes that are hard to fathom, the movies tries at times to follow close to what was known at the time but the lack of attention to detail keeps getting in the way.
Beatty does a great job acting in the film and his chemistry with his future wife Annette Bening is something to behold.
I don't mind so much that Beatty is about 15 years older than Siegel was during these years but it's more upsetting that Virginia Hill (Benings character) is portrayed as a street tough city girl when she was a street tough country girl from Alabama.
Mickey Cohen was in his early 30s but is portrayed as a hardened criminal in his late 40s to early 50s. Also the background story on his relationship with Siegel is tangled up here.
The movie does drag on at times and there are some absurd scenes which never would have happened.
Beatty is at his best playing the family man - his charisma carries the picture but they couldn't even get the ending to be accurate historically which kind of defeats the purpose of making a biopic movie.