Mean Streets (1973)
Martin Scorsese's breakthrough film, and his first of eight collaborations with Robert De Niro, is practically a dry run for many future films. Bringing to the fore inspired use of music and the seedy pool hall style violence mixed into an almost matter of factly look at life from the other side, in this case the Italian suburbs of New York, that would become almost a trademark of Scorsese film making.
In fact Mean Streets seems greatly influenced by Italian cinema of the previous decade and comes over as semi-autobiographical at times. Not really a crime film as such, the film about two friends, Charlie, the older, as played by Harvey Keitel, is a mob debt collector, whilst De Niro plays Johnny Boy, the tearaway of the two, and constantly on the run from loan sharks. Playing out as a character study, Charlie comes across as the most sympathetic, attempting to juggle his mob life wile coping with epileptic girlfriend Teresa's health problems. Whilst De Niro is generally just annoying.
As a piece of film making, Mean Streets is seminal....however, i don't like it much at all.
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