movie review lansky

Meyer Lansky is perhaps the only iconic American gangster upon whom was bestowed the arguably dubious honor of being killed off in an American gangster movie before he himself actually died. I refer, of course, to Hyman Roth of Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II,” played by Lee Strasberg , who avers “I’m a retired investor living on a pension” before taking a couple of shots to the gut when entering the United States. Roth was, it is said, based on Lansky, a mob financier and gambling majordomo who always denied any connection to organized crime and died in bed, of lung cancer, in 1983, a decade after Coppola’s movie came out. 

In “Lansky,” a misbegotten biopic co-written and directed by Eytan Rockaway , Harvey Keitel , now in his eighties, plays Lansky in his Miami twilight years in the early ‘80s. His performance is the only legitimate reason to sit through this tiresome, cumbersome treatment of the man and his world. Keitel is sharp, witty, ironical, knowing, all the things you want from the concept of an intelligent criminal in late-life-rumination mode. 

The frame story couching Keitel’s work is problem number one. Rockaway gives us the stories of two men rather than the story of one: the other guy is a broke journalist named David Stone , whom Lansky has sort-of commissioned to write a book on him, to be published after his death. Stone is a character in the macho-journalist mode, which in cinema terms means he talks kind of like an idiot, not to put too fine a point on it. When he’s not on a pay phone making empty promises to his ex-wife and young daughter about alimony payments or money for braces, he’s gawking at the young woman in the bathing suit lounging by his motel pool. Stone is played by Sam Worthington ; any assets he has as a performer are not brought forth in this role. In the exchanges between Lansky and Stone, Keitel might as well be talking to a wall, albeit a wall with a mustache. 

These exchanges are alternated with threadbare period scenes in which younger Lansky figures out gambling, forms an alliance with Ben “ Bugsy ” Siegel, experiences the heartbreak of raising a disabled child, that sort of thing. These scenes are packed with a lot of capital-A Acting from John Magaro as Lansky, Shane McRae as Charles “Lucky” Luciano, and an especially hammy David Cade as Siegel. “The only thing Bugsy enjoyed more than killing was the ladies, or maybe it was the other way around,” Keitel’s Lansky recalls. Well, which was it? 

In the meantime, Stone’s biographical efforts are watched by some FBI agents, who are frantically trying to capture the $300 million in assets they are certain Lansky has lying around somewhere. This money remains, in real life, a source of speculation. And why not? It’s a lot of money. These scenes are among the movie’s least credible; one office confab between David James Elliott, Danny Abeckaser, and James Moses Black feels like a scene workshop in which the players are trying to impersonate Rob Riggle , Al Pacino , and Bill Duke . 

Never as giddily awful as “ Gotti ,” this movie suffers more from a case of what film critic Andrew Sarris called “Strained Seriousness.” Except the ostensible seriousness here never runs particularly deep. “Lansky” is for Keitel completists only.

Now playing in select theaters and available on demand.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Harvey Keitel as Meyer Lansky
• John Magaro as Young Meyer
• Minka Kelly as Maureen
• AnnaSophia Robb as Young Anne
• Sam Worthington as David Stone
• Robert Walker Branchaud as Al Capone
• Sandra Ellis Lafferty as Anne Lansky
• Eytan Rockaway

Writer (story)

• Robert Rockaway
• Martin Hunter
• Steven Rosenblum

Cinematographer

• Peter Flinckenberg

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‘Lansky’ Review: A Mobster Burnishes His Legacy

Harvey Keitel stars as the underworld financial wizard in this dramatization.

• Share full article

By Ben Kenigsberg

The best thing in “Lansky” is Harvey Keitel’s turn as the gangster Meyer Lansky. Eager to change the popular perception of his career, and dying of lung cancer, he agrees to tell his story to a writer in 1981.

The way Keitel plays Lansky makes it difficult to distinguish cordiality from coldbloodedness. In a delicatessen on his home turf in Miami, Lansky orders tongue sandwiches and quickly lays out the rules for the writer, a fictional character called David Stone (Sam Worthington): He can’t use a recorder. Everything is off the record unless he is told otherwise. And making clear that he knows all about the writer’s life and family, Lansky warns Stone that if he violates their agreement, “there will be consequences.”

The heart of this movie, directed by Eytan Rockaway, is the relationship between the writer and his subject. So it’s dismaying when “Lansky” turns out to include flashbacks, with John Magaro (“First Cow”) playing a much flatter version of the mobster as a young man.

In his obituary , Lansky, who died in 1983, is described as the “reputed financial genius of the underworld,” with his fingers presumed to be in bootlegging, gambling in Cuba and other rackets.

The gangland clichés can be cringe-worthy at times, particularly when the film emphasizes Lansky’s Jewish background. “If you need any weapons or ammunition, you let me know,” he says after slipping cash to an emissary for the future state of Israel. And no one should ever again score a montage of killings to “Hava Nagila,” as Rockaway does at another moment.

The 1981 scenes without Keitel are similarly useless. F.B.I. agents search for hidden money. Minka Kelly plays a guest at Stone’s motel with obvious ulterior motives. And the ending, in which Stone ponders what he learned from Lansky — “We measure ourselves through the eyes of the ones we love” — is a baffling detour into soppiness. Like “ Bugsy ” (1991), “Lansky” concludes with bizarrely upbeat onscreen text noting the positive economic impacts of the gambling industry.

Lansky Rated R. It’s not personal; it’s only business. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play , FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

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Lansky Reviews

Keitel and Magaro team up to give a captivating portrayal of Meyer Lansky that is firmly rooted in the real account.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 17, 2022

Much of the violence features in a series of well-staged if perfunctory flashbacks, but Keitel's menacing portrayal suggests a man still capable of intimidation.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 30, 2022

Lansky features a terrific performance from Keitel, making something recognisably human from a complex character who has been played once too often as a cartoon villain

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 28, 2022

Keitel has played many tough guys throughout his career, but it is hard to think of a role in which he has been better.

Full Review | Mar 4, 2022

American and Israeli governments prove to be the dirtiest mob of the bunch.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 12, 2022

A dynamic script... permanently mixes the repudiable gangster past with the calm and almost inactive present. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jan 5, 2022

A little stroll through American history. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 4, 2021

So Lansky's kind of a mess. But Keitel makes it a mostly endearing one. Corral your expectations.

Full Review | Oct 13, 2021

There are no great faults to find with it, except one: fans of the genre have literally seen every element of it before.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Oct 7, 2021

Lanskyis a story worth watching. However, I'd love to see how this narrative would have played out if the filmmaker had been given a lot more money.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Sep 24, 2021

The film's decision to stay with the narrator and not Lansky himself was a deathly bad decision.

Full Review | Sep 17, 2021

As a premise Lansky had promise and there is still a great film to be made. Unfortunately, this is not it.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2021

Its trite script lacks emotional resonance (though the thread about Israeli politics was interesting). But overall, pretty pokey.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 18, 2021

One wonders what we might've seen had someone made a movie about Lansky in the 1970s, starring Keitel. Now that might've been, as they used to say, a must-see.

Full Review | Jul 9, 2021

Please, someone put Keitel in one last film that deserves him. Keitel does infinitely more for "Lansky" than it does for him.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 9, 2021

Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese has mastered the art of making movies about American mobsters. [This movie, which is] about real-life 20th century crime boss Meyer Lansky, is one of numerous cheap and trite imitations of a Scorsese gangster film.

Full Review | Jul 8, 2021

Harvey Keitel takes a swing at portraying the "Mob's Accountant" and Keitel is as reliable as he's always been - but while this is a well-filmed and well-acted story, much of the material has been covered in superior movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 6, 2021

Harvey Keitel and Sam Worthington are good actors but they are wasted in the present day aspect of the movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 6, 2021

Lansky was a fascinatingly conflicted man. Rockaway, his crew, Keitel, and Magaro have crafted an engrossing and indelible movie of his life story.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 2, 2021

This finely produced biopic about Meyer Lansky never feels rushed even as it moves briskly through the decades.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 1, 2021

‘Lansky’ Review: Harvey Keitel Propels an Uneven Biopic About Notorious Mobster Meyer Lansky

Writer-director Eytan Rockaway covers well-trod ground with mixed results.

By Joe Leydon

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“People see the same thing from different perspectives. And that fascinates me,” Harvey Keitel notes in an early scene while playing the title role in “Lansky,” writer-director Eytan Rockaway’s ambitious but uneven biopic about the notorious mobster Meyer Lansky.

It’s tempting to read this snippet of dialogue as Rockaway’s way of acknowledging, right from the start, that his indie drama is yet another interpretation of real-life events previously recounted, with varying degrees of accuracy, in features and TV movies as diverse as “Virginia Hill,” a half-forgotten 1974 TV-movie that marked Joel Schumacher’s debut as writer-director; the 1999 HBO production “Lansky,” starring Richard Dreyfuss and directed by John McNaughton from a script by David Mamet; and Barry Levinson’s “Bugsy” (1991), featuring Ben Kingsley well cast as Meyer Lansky opposite Warren Beatty’s Bugsy Siegel. Truth to tell, however, comparisons to those predecessors don’t always work in Rockaway’s favor.

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But never mind: Keitel (who, not incidentally, played Bugsy Siegel to Dyan Cannon’s title character in “Virginia Hill,” and appeared as gangster Mickey Cohen in “Bugsy”) infuses his performance here with more than enough lion-in-winter gravitas to dominate every moment he is on screen, and quite a few when he isn’t, which in turn is sufficient to propel “Lansky” through stretches when the passing of time is felt, and the budgetary limitations are obvious. The veteran actor commands attention not by resorting to showboating histrionics — indeed, he rarely raises his voice — but rather by conveying the sometimes ingratiating, sometimes intimidating self-assurance of someone who has seen it all and didn’t care much for it, and who knows where all the bodies are buried because he personally paid for many of the burials.

Popular on Variety

The 1999 “Lansky” concluded with Dreyfuss’ Lansky talking to an eagerly inquisitive reporter in a diner while enjoying his golden years in 1981 Miami. Rockaway’s film kinda-sorta picks up where the HBO version left off, with Keitel’s aged Lansky, in the wake of receiving a medical death sentence, summoning journalist David Stone ( Sam Worthington , persuasively conflicted) to his favorite Florida eatery. Lansky makes Stone an offer he can’t refuse: Lansky will tell his life story — unapologetically, and maybe ever truthfully — in a series of interviews that Stone can use as material for what is certain to be a best-selling biography. The only catch: Stone can’t publish the book until Lansky dies. That hardly qualifies as a dealbreaker, given Lansky’s condition, so he readily agrees.

“Lansky” proceeds apace on parallel narrative tracks, alternating between flashbacks illustrating Lansky’s rise from impoverished young Russian Jewish immigrant to ruthlessly resourceful underworld royalty, and 1981 scenes with the retired mobster and his attentive Boswell. The movie stops far short of glamorizing its central character, even though it does suggest the 1981 Lansky has a playfully avuncular side. Some of the dialogue is too on-the-nose by half — “The only winners in gambling, as in life, are those who control the game!” — so it helps that Keitel delivers such words of wisdom with a twinkle in his eye. It helps even more that, late in the film, that twinkle provides a grace note of ambiguity as Lansky deflects Stone’s queries about a former confederate’s untimely (and extremely convenient) demise.

Stone, estranged from his wife and dearly missing his children, is so desperately focused on the possibility of a big payday that his judgment is, to put it mildly, clouded. While staying at the sort of seedy motel frequented by budget-conscious critics covering film festivals, the journalist repeatedly notices an alluring beauty (Minka Kelly) in the pool — but doesn’t suspect her of having ulterior motives until about a half-hour after the audience catches on. Later, he thinks he can hide from Lansky his reluctant agreement to leak info to an FBI agent (David James Elliot) obsessed with locating the $300 million Lansky purportedly has stashed away. That this isn’t a fatal error speaks volumes about Lansky’s late-in-life willingness to forgive and forget.

Throughout the flashbacks, Rockaway strives to achieve some sporadic semblance of the dramatic heft and epic sweep of “The Godfather” as Lansky gains wealth and power by running gambling casinos throughout the United States and Cuba, organizing organized crime, ramrodding Murder Inc., and hanging out with such other infamous gangland figures as Bugsy Siegel (David Cade) and Lucky Luciano (Shane McRae).

Being a criminal empire-builder places serious strains on his marriage to his first wife (AnnaSophia Robb) — his second wife, fleetingly referenced in dialogue, is conspicuously absent from the picture — and keeps him from spending as much quality time with his kids as he’d like. On the other hand, his being a proud Jew drives him to make time for such activities as leading violent attacks on American Bund creeps and helping the U.S. government root out Nazi saboteurs before and during World War II, and later throwing his financial support to the founding of Israel. (Yes, believe it or not, those things actually happened — though Lansky’s motives, as this movie acknowledges, were not entirely selfless.)

Unfortunately, John Magaro (late of “First Cow”) is too blandly underwhelming as the young Meyer Lansky for the character to inspire much sympathy or instill much fear. Sure, the real-life Lansky reportedly made his mark by being more cold-bloodedly pragmatic than ferociously bloodthirsty. But Magaro made me think of what Tom Hanks once said while explaining his casting of the normally unprepossessing Bruno Kirby as a surprisingly lethal hotel detective in an episode of the noirish “Fallen Angels” cable series: “I wanted someone who looked like he was a shoe salesman — but who could break your thumbs if he had to.” Alas, Magaro looks like he would simply sell you some loafers.

Reviewed online, Houston, June 23, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 119 MIN.

• Production: A Vertical Entertainment release of an Above the Clouds presentation, in association with 120db Films, CaliWood Pictures of a Guns at Dawn, production. Producers: Jeff Hoffman, Robert Ogden Barnum, Eric Binns, Lee Broda. Executive producers: Peter Graham, Stephen Hays, Johnathan Deckter, Nicolas Chartier, Peter Jarowey, Rich Goldberg, Mitch Budin, Russell Gray, Christine Holder, Mark Holder, Jeff Rice, Todd Hoffman, Kyle Stroud, Howard Scott, Joelle Scott, Oliver Ridge, Carte Blanche, Lucky 13 Prods., Michael J. Reiser, Jina Panebianco, R. Wesley Sierk III, Luke Daniels, Alan Pao, Tom Malloy, Russell Terlecki.
• Crew: Director, writer: Eytan Rockaway. Camera: Peter Flinckenberg. Editor: Martin Hunter, Steven Rosenblum. Music: Max Aruj.
• With: Harvey Keitel, Sam Worthington, John Magaro, AnnaSophia Robb, Minka Kelly, David James Elliot, David Cade, Danny A. Abeckaser.
• Music By: Max Aruj

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User reviews

Harvey Keitel carries this movie on his ageing back

• Sep 10, 2021

Harvey Keitel was outstanding, but even he couldn't save the terrible screenplay.

• Top_Dawg_Critic
• Jul 15, 2021

KEITEL INCREDIBLE

• alanl06-662-77020
• Sep 14, 2021

He called himself an angel, with a dirty face.

• Oct 1, 2021

Harvey is MAGISTERIAL

• Oct 27, 2021

No knowledge

• Jun 23, 2021

Interesting

• bryangary65
• Jan 18, 2023

Fact-based movie about a notorious mobster , telling of the tumultuous life of the organized crime boss

• Jan 1, 2023

An ok biography

• LetsReviewThat26
• Aug 5, 2023

Wonderful story to be told.

• Jun 29, 2021

You get what you pay for

• Jun 25, 2021
• Jan 10, 2022

Interesting and worth the time just for Keitel

• redbaron-86192
• Oct 25, 2021

Lacklustre and forgettable mob bio-pic

• Dec 10, 2021

Fascinating

• Jul 17, 2021

Low budget gangster film

• elliotjeory
• Jun 14, 2022

flashback to mob-ville

• Aug 26, 2021

An Overly Sympathetic Portrayal of Lansky

• Jan 29, 2022

KEITEL DOES IT AGAIN

• Dec 5, 2021

Kietell Is Sterling in Lansky Lite Bio

• Nov 29, 2021

Entertaining

• noahharrigan
• Apr 11, 2022

Boring Telling of an Interesting Story

• Oct 8, 2021

The tail wags the dog a little

• Jan 23, 2024

boring and inaccurate

• howboutthisone_huh
• Jun 26, 2021

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Lansky Review: Leave The Script, Take The Keitel

A film for mob movie junkies, "Lansky" is a deep cut. It shines a spotlight on a character they know, stars an actor they love, and hits all the familiar beats. A lack of cohesion and blurred lines of reality keep the film from taking over its territory; however, the flick has moments when it takes firm hold of its genre like a boss.

Far and away, the best scenes in "Lansky" are whenever Harvey Keitel is onscreen. Meyer Lansky has been a character in about a dozen movies, half that many TV shows and another dozen books, but almost always as a peripheral character holding his cards close to the vest — and Keitel's scenes as the aged mob boss, months away from an imminent death, are riveting. Whether you're remembering Hyman Roth from " The Godfather ," James Woods in "Once Upon a Time in America," or characters with Lansky's name from movies like "Bugsy" or series like "Boardwalk Empire," these scenes are the mob equivalent of the Boba Fett scenes in "The Mandalorian," taking a familiar supporting presence and expanding his tale considerably for the diehards.

Unfortunately, Keitel's screen time represents less than half the film. The rest is overstuffed with flashbacks and dual subplots — one involving FBI agents searching for Lansky's supposed $300 million hidden fortune, the other following the personal affairs of David Stone (a down-on-his-luck writer hoping a book about Lansky will turn his life around) that just make you wish writer/director Eytan Rockaway would hurry up and get back to the good stuff.

This framing device (which deserves to be the primary device) has Keitel's mobster tracking down Sam Worthington's Stone in 1981, telling him the "real" story as long as he promises not to publish it until after Lansky's imminent death. Meeting in a deli over tongue sandwiches, Lansky and Stone forge a quasi-friendship that has the so-called "mob's accountant" spilling the beans — and offering the younger man advice on taking life by the horns.

Whether Meyer Lansky actually was a real-life Yoda is a mystery; in this movie, the guy drops reflections on life, death and professionalism like he's one of those motivational posters that once adorned office walls nationwide. Among these phrases you can imagine under an image of a bear eating upstream-swimming salmon:

"I'm a business man. I don't choose sides. I choose opportunities."

"Next time hit him first. Always hit 'em first."

"The choices we make are what defines us. I don't question the choices I make."

Other questions about Lansky (arguably one of the most secretive public figures who could warrant such a biopic) are just as mysterious. Did he really act as a liaison between the mob and the feds, extracting information from German spies to be passed back to Uncle Sam? Did this information really stop an imminent attack on American soil? Did Lansky truly provide weapons to the state of Israel? Did he give a passionate speech to a roomful of bad stereotype Italian mobsters, defending Ben "Bugsy" Siegel, before walking out of the room and sealing his friend's death sentence?

Where were we walking to again?

Scenes such as these, told through flashback, feel like they could have been more powerful if Keitel had just told the story; sometimes all you need is a great actor, a solid monologue and a camera. Instead, the Hollywood veteran sets them up, then we're taken to John Magaro ("First Cow") to act them out as a young Lansky. While Magaro is passable, such moments underline the difference between an actor and a movie star. Whatever that unquantifiable quality is that separates the two, Keitel has always had it — and nobody else in "Lansky" is in the same neighborhood when it comes to commanding the camera's attention.

But it isn't for lack of trying. AnnaSophia Robb, playing Lansky's wife Anne, gets one scene as a young girl with an attraction to the mobster life, then spends the rest of the film shrieking, punching and telling her husband he's going to hell. Never has such an empty, underdeveloped character been so loud and obnoxious. Minka Kelly's Maureen, meanwhile, lingers like a walking thirst trap at the hotel pool where Worthington's Stone is staying, beginning an affair with the writer that is so suspicious it will make you wonder how this guy is smart enough to string a sentence together. She is similarly stranded by a script that gives her an intimidating ex-boyfriend for only one scene when it needs him, then later similarly yanks her away when her services are no longer required.

Robb and Kelly represent the extent of female involvement in this film, save for a deli waitress who occasionally says a line punctuated by the word "hon." Not only does this film miserably fail the Bechdel test, but it dishonors a mob-story tradition that has done surprisingly well over the years in exploring complex female characters — think Diane Keaton in "The Godfather" films, Lorraine Bracco in "Goodfellas," Annette Bening in "Bugsy," Sharon Stone in "Casino," and Kelly Macdonald and Gretchen Mol on "Boardwalk Empire." Sometimes, the best way to understand a mobster is through the eyes of the woman he allows into his life — but here, it's an opportunity wasted on cliched hysterics and cheap seduction.

So tell me, who's the audience for all these Avatar sequels?

Towards the end of the film, like a gangster under surveillance by the feds, "Lansky" seems to feel the walls closing in. Desperate attempts are made to wrap it all up in some kind of profound way, with Hail Mary passes involving the mobster's ill son, straight-out-a-Dick-Wolf-show agents closing in on Lansky's supposed fortune, and scenes of Keitel strolling contemplatively along a beach. Even a seemingly pivotal question of whether Stone will betray Lansky's confidence is treated as a plot signpost rather than anything worth in-depth exploration.

"God bless America," Keitel spits out at one point, still bringing the goods at 82 years old. "They could never own up to the fact that somebody like me could be capable of doing any good in this world."

The film concludes with a reminder that the Las Vegas casinos Meyer Lansky helped launch are now a multi-billion-dollar industry. Like so much else in "Lansky," it's a point other movies ("Bugsy," "Casino") have made more effectively, and does little to get beneath the surface of who the man really was — which is exactly how Meyer Lansky would have liked it.

Den of Geek

Lansky: Harvey Keitel Gives a Gangster Legend a Subtle Farewell

Harvey Keitel still knows his mean streets well in Lansky, even if the movie sometimes misses its mark.

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“My reputation has a habit of preceding me,” Harvey Keitel’s Meyer Lansky explains toward the beginning of Lansky . “When they don’t know you, they put labels on you.”  Writer-director Eytan Rockaway’s biographical crime feature is a no-frills, selective retelling of a notorious figure, which works because it puts a recognizable face to that label.

Nicknamed the “Mob’s Accountant,” Meyer Lansky knew his numbers, and Rockaway’s film only suffers when it hedges its bets. It begins with a grand promise to portray Lansky as he would have liked to have been portrayed in history. The recollections and the stories work very well when they stick to the gangster of the title. The low-budget, independent feel brings an immediacy, and more rebel street cred than the risk-taking former crime beat journalist at the center.

Sam Worthington is a little too nervous too much of the time as David Stone, the author who is conducting the interviews. He is holding something back from the moment he meets Lansky, and we have to wonder why Meyer would agree to spill his guts to such an obvious wild card. It is more confounding why Lansky would forgive the guy for going behind his back, just because he “likes” him.

Stone is loosely based on the real-life story of the director’s father and the interviews he conducted before Lanksy died. The man who interviewed Lansky had to have been more likeable than the fictitious Stone. The writer here judges Lansky as he tells even the most personal stories. There is an incriminating tone to too many of the follow-up questions. He’s like an American Piers Morgan, almost always looking for a fight. “Does that help you sleep at night?” he taunts his subject after hearing the details of an execution. Lansky says at the beginning he wants to control how history paints him. He wouldn’t have allowed this line of questioning to go that far. He would have smelled a rat.

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Some of Stone’s backstory could have been clipped in favor of more recreations. This is Lansky’s story, and we’d love to hear more of it. Or see it. We get a glimpse of young Meyer, the child on the street learning to lay line bets at crap games. But we only hear the famous story of how “the wandering Jew” stood up to Lucky Luciano’s (Shane McRae) gang of teen toughs when they “politely asked him to empty his pockets.”

Most of the film is functional exposition. It is not particularly artful, but it gets the story across. A few shots are as well-framed as Miller’s Crossing , but some of the historic recreations have the feel of the crime scene reenactments found in true crime television specials. Except for the gore.

There are some wonderfully queasy bits thrown in, like a simple thumb in the eye during the routing of the Nazi Bund from New York. Viewers might even be tempted to avert their eyes from a few of the visuals. Again, they are not artistically rendered, they are strictly functional, and not gratuitous. There is no overkill. Nothing is done for specific shock value.

John Magaro, who plays young Meyer Lansky, will be playing young Silvio Dante in the upcoming The Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark . He brings humor into the part, obviously relishing his scenes with David Cade as Ben Siegel. The pair bring the feel of an easy camaraderie.

“Look at me when you fucking die, you double-crossing sack of shit,” Siegel spits as he stabs the boss of all bosses on Lansky’s order to “make him feel it.” It’s become one of my favorite gangster movie lines of all time. It could easily slide out of the side of Joe Pesci’s mouth as Tommy in Goodfellas . Not all the dialogue is up to that level of gangster homage, but this also works to the film’s credit.

Young Meyer’s romantic scenes with Anne, played by AnnaSophia Robb, are also quite effective. Robb’s reading of the line “so, truck rentals?” is filled with bemused mirth and flirtation. But their more contentious and violent scenes together, as the marriage goes through several downward spirals, are not as convincing. The acting is solid throughout, but we never really believe Magaro could actually bring himself to hit her. Lacking the visceral malice, the actor is, perhaps, too nice a person. Again, this works in spite of itself, as it makes Anne’s electroshock therapy scene that much more intense.

The real reason to watch this is Keitel and witness him do what he does best, become a character. Keitel, who enlisted in the marines at the age of 16, has played in the same mean streets as Lansky since he first hit cinema. He may or may not be acting in any of the scenes, nor does he have to in order to capture the essence of Meyer Lansky. Every memory he recalls can be his own, he can react from a memory of life or his life in the cinema. 

In the gangster movie world, Keitel is Lansky. As much as Al Pacino could lay claim to being a Lucky Luciano of film, or Robert De Niro can call a Genovese title to himself. They didn’t play those characters, specifically, but they fill the same roles in the gangster movie hierarchy. They overthrew the old guard, the Bogarts, Cagneys, and George Rafts, who walked the same streets or drank in the same speakeasies.

Keitel is relaxed, tanned, and comfortable in Lansky’s skin. When he threatens Stone at the onset of their arrangement, his amiable glint disappears, but only for one moment of laser focus. Then he gives a foreshadowing of the clemency he will grant. To the director, this is just a passing tone to give depth to a change in scene, but Keitel throws almost imperceptible curveballs.

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“The only winners in life are those that control the game,” Lansky declares at the top of the film, and Keitel owns this movie without having to get up from his seat at the diner. Stone is right when he pegs Lansky as a complicated man and says his book isn’t “about one man, it’s about the 20th century.”

Lansky makes a good case for the claim, and could have carried it out, even on the tight production. Maybe especially because of it, some of the best mob movies were low budget affairs. It comes up short, but gangster fans should not miss it. The performances are enthusiastic and the history is there.

Lansky hits select theaters and will be available On Demand on June 25.

Tony Sokol | @tsokol

Culture Editor Tony Sokol is a writer, playwright and musician. He contributed to Altvariety, Chiseler, Smashpipe, and other magazines. He is the TV Editor at Entertainment…