Rob the Mob

The future ain’t what it used to be

Raymond De Felitta’s Rob the Mob fictionalizes the early-’90s Bonnie/Clyde tale of Tommy and Rosemarie Uva, two ex-cons who accidentally contributed to the apprehension of twenty-plus members of various New York City crime families after burglarizing Italian social clubs.  In a film, an audience has to be able to at least sympathize with the protagonists (read: understand why they do what they do, not necessarily root for them), so there’s plenty of highfalutin contrivance as far as Tommy and Rosie’s motivations go.  But at heart, it’s a Non-Mob movie and a love story, and the fact is, no audience wants to spend time with criminals who remind us of real criminals.

Tommy (Michael Pitt) serves an eighteen-month sentence after robbing a flower shop.  Trying to go straight, his girlfriend, Rosie (Nina Arianda) gets a job at a debt collection agency, probably one of the only businesses hiring in NYC in ’91, and eventually gets Tommy a job there too.  But Tommy is more interested in the trial of Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, the notorious Mafia hit man whose testimony moved federal crosshairs towards Gambino-family boss John Gotti.  When the couple begin receiving paychecks for fifty dollars, they realize a “plan B” is in order.  Tommy procures an Uzi, and decides to stop robbing small businesses and instead go for Italian social clubs, which consist of “old guys playing cards,” and where weapons are not allowed.  He learns from Gravano’s trial which clubs are Mob-run.  When Rosie, the pragmatic one, suggests that this might not be a great idea, Tommy cites his father’s abuse at the hands of the Mob as further reason to brutalize them (it’s an unnecessary addition whose purpose is to make sure the audience thinks of Tommy and Rosie as good guys, and it brings back sad memories of Oliver Stone’s unforgivable revisions to Quentin Tarantino’s Natural Born Killers script).

The narrative stays with Tommy and Rosie until they rob their first club, and then, as it must, the scope gets wider.  We meet Big Al Fiorello (Andy Garcia), a fictional, composite mafioso on whom the feds are keeping a close eye.  He still technically runs things, but he spends most of his time with his grandson, playing games and sharing the secrets of cooking rice balls.  Oddly enough, Al is the gentlest, most morally sound character in the film, and when he reveals the circumstances of how he ended up a mobster in the first place, we really don’t want the feds (played by Samira Wiley and Frank Whaley) to catch him.  The third piece of perspective goes to Jerry Cardozo (Ray Romano), a journalist who has covered the Mob for thirty years.  He becomes fascinated with Tommy and Rosie, going so far as to interview them about their Robin-Hood-ism, and serves as a conduit to how crooked the feds really are – he even proclaims to a federal agent, “You guys are worse than [the Mob]!”  Yes, screenwriters, we get it already.

Long story short, Al’s hand is forced due to “The List,” a MacGuffin inexplicably entrusted to the aging Joey D (Burt Young), which is taken by Tommy and Rosie when they rob the Waikiki Club.  Al puts out a hit on the couple, who seem to be the only ones who do not realize how serious this is.  Count how many times someone asks them, “You know what’s gonna happen, right?”  By the end, for all their belligerence, they really haven’t figured it out.

The First Rule of Non-Mob Movies (i.e. movies that aren’t about the Mob per se, but feature characters who get involved with gangsters) is that they must become Mob movies halfway through, for the simple reason that filmmakers cannot resist making a Mob movie when they have a chance to.  A prime example is last year’s The Iceman, about Richard Kuklinski.  As soon as he gets involved with the Mob, Ray Liotta’s mob boss character suddenly gets his own scenes and conflicts that have nothing to do with the main character or storyline, and serve only to add more shopworn “gangster scenes” to the pile.  Rob the Mob follows the same rule, but it’s handled more responsibly, and Andy Garcia’s character is someone we can genuinely understand and even get behind.  This way, there are no “bad guys” in the movie, just polarized characters who cannot possibly all win (though to be fair, Big Al’s henchmen are all typical mooks, one of whom, played by Michael Rispoli, can’t even understand why Al would want to spare him the task of murdering someone).

Michael Pitt and Nina Arianda are a golden duo, and both manage to play the characters as honest-to-goodness lowlives with enormous aspirations and one very bad idea about how to achieve them.  They could have easily been depicted as misunderstood Robin-Hoods, and even with the creative licenses the film takes, it never gets too precious about anything but their for-better-or-for-worse love for one another (in fact, whenever anyone says something serious, piano music plays).  As you’d expect, the film contains plenty of nods to earlier Mob movies, and a surprising amount of subtle Quentin Tarantino references (think True Romance).  Romano’s character is relatively flat and straightforward, more a plot device than a character, but he never takes more than his fair share of screen time.  Garcia’s turn as the goodhearted mafia don is wonderful, and my only regret about the casting is that Pitt and Arianda never share a scene with Garcia (which makes sense story-wise, but is still a bit sad in retrospect).  Unfortunately, the film does perpetuate the popular depiction of Italians as pasta-slurping goombas and greasy wiseguys who know how to do three things: cook, play cards, and talk about whacking people.  Two gangsters write messages to each other in tomato sauce.  Garcia at one point declares, “There’s no Sunday without cavatelli and braciole!”  Is the idea that most people don’t know what that means, and will just think it sounds obscure and authoritative?  Because those of Italian descent (myself included) groaned a little.

Hats off to Rob the Mob for doing a different Mob movie.  One that cares more about the non-mobsters, involves no real violent imagery, and doesn’t festoon itself with profound ideas.  And, y’know, for reminding us how much sense Yogi actually made sometimes.

Rob the Mob (2014) written by Jonathan Fernandez; directed by Raymond De Felitta; starring Michael Pitt, Nina Arianda, Andy Garcia, and Ray Romano.