As Good As It Gets

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A lot of fun.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

I was expecting a documentary about Meyer Lansky, or at least an entertaining movie. I got neither.It starts out with Lansky as an old man in Israel, hoping that nation would take him in. Then it shows his childhood, his family fleeing anti-Semitic persecution. The rest is basically him associating and interacting with mobsters.Lansky was an important figure in the Mafia, being the financial genius who helped make it the big organization it became. But the movie makes him look more like an innocent victim of circumstance than one who deliberately chose the dark path. Plenty of other Jews faced persecution as well, but they did not become criminals.But the movie should have included at least the most telling aspects of his life-he died not having much money, and his children were not proud of him.

This tells the story of Meyer Lansky, a big time crook or not depending on your viewpoint, the film shows lansky as a guy in his old age looking back on his life in short clip flashbacks, it tells us the major events and the development of his crime empire, the script is poor the acting stilted, despite some major acting talent in the film, at no point is there any dramatic tension or blood stirring action, it meanders towards a totally unstartling conclusion, it turns out the lights, puts itself to bed, and goes to sleep with anyone watching having already got there an hour beforehand, really don't watch it, it should have been attention grabbing and entertaining, its a 1 out of ten for me.

So Mamet wrote the script? I didn't notice. I was distracted by seeing my former mayor (of Herzliya, Israel) Eli Landau listed as one of the authors of the book. Some people consider him a bit of a hoodlum himself.Anyway, lore has it that Lansky never got involved in the actual rough stuff. In the movie we see him along for the ride once or twice, but basically he's a pencil-pusher so he's more boring than your average movie gangster. The conflict that we do find him involved in personally is his battle to take advantage of the Law of Return in order to stay in Israel. Unfortunately, though it provides the framework for the film, that conflict is underexploited for drama. Basically, we see Lansky sitting there as his lawyer explains things. There could have been other characters brought in to represent the other side for some real interpersonal confrontations.Part of the Israeli atmosphere, by the way, consists of continual playing of a variation on the song "Hayu Leilot" ("There Once Were Nights"), by Yaakov Orland and Mordechai Zeira. The song is not mentioned in the credits. Somebody oughta sue.

Richard Dreyfuss's performance in this riveting gangster movie confirms Richards place as one of the greatest actors of all time. Lansky is a power packed true story of the famous Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky. It has a distinct advantage over many other gangster movies in that it isn't all violence. While there are several violent scenes, we really get to know Lansky and feel for him. This is because of Richards great performance. His presence commands the attention of the viewer in all of his scenes. Anthony La Paglia also stands out as Lucky Luciano. I highly recommend this movie if you are looking for a smart, entertaining film with some action thrown in. A BRILLIANT MOVIE