We love crime movies. We may go on and on about Scorsese’s ability to incorporate Italian neo-realism techniques into Mean Streets (1973), the place of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) in the canon of postwar noir, The Godfather (1972) as a socio-cultural commentary on the distortion of the ideals of the American dream blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda…but that ain’t it.
We love crime movies because we love watching a guy who doesn’t have to behave, who doesn’t have to – nor care to – put a choker on his id and can let his darkest, most visceral impulses run wild. Some smart-mouth gopher tells hood Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), “Go fuck yourself,” in Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), and does Tommy roll with it? Does he spit back, “Fuck me? Nah, fuck you!” Does he go home and tell his mother?
Nope.
He pulls a .45 cannon out from...
We love crime movies because we love watching a guy who doesn’t have to behave, who doesn’t have to – nor care to – put a choker on his id and can let his darkest, most visceral impulses run wild. Some smart-mouth gopher tells hood Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci), “Go fuck yourself,” in Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990), and does Tommy roll with it? Does he spit back, “Fuck me? Nah, fuck you!” Does he go home and tell his mother?
Nope.
He pulls a .45 cannon out from...
- 10/30/2012
- by Bill Mesce
- SoundOnSight
Legendary character actor Peter Ustinov, who won two Oscars for roles in Spartacus and Topkapi, died Sunday night in Switzerland of heart failure; he was 82. Also a prolific writer, Ustinov began his acting career at the age of 17 and sold his first screenplay (for The True Glory) at 24. At age 30, he earned his first Oscar nomination for his turn as Nero in Quo Vadis?, effectively establishing himself as one of the screen's most versatile supporting actors. Though known to most moviegoers as a portly British character actor, Ustinov was a multi-talented entertainer who also wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the acclaimed 1962 film Billy Budd, wrote innumerable novels and plays (including Romanoff and Juliet), and traveled extensively as a humanitarian, raconteur and humorist. Ustinov's biographer, John Miller, once remarked that the actor, who was knighted in 1990, "had enough careers for about six other men." Though confined to a wheelchair later in his life, Ustinov continued to raise money for UNICEF and most recently appeared in the film Luther. Other notable roles include his turns as Agatha Christie detective Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun and Appointment with Death as well as films Lorenzo's Oil, Logan's Run, Hot Millions (for which he also received a Screenplay Oscar nomination), The Sundowners and The Egyptian. --Prepared by IMDb staff...
- 3/29/2004
- WENN
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