Review: “Rob The Mob”

by NEW CO’ER Kim F (a professional bibliophile and layabout who who is constantly flabbergasted to find herself living in LA along with six houseplants and one very disgruntled cat.)

Full disclosure, this is the first time I have ever done anything like this. So if this review seems at all random and babbling, whelp, that would be why. Also I am just going to throw in a blanket spoilers warning. I try not to give away any major plot points, but this is pretty much just me talking about the movie the movie so some stuff will be in there.

Sitting in the screening room waiting for Rob the Mob to begin all I could think was one thing, a single mantra that ran through my head like code streaming across the screen in the Matrix, Pleasedon’tsuckpleasedon’tsuckpleasedon’tsuck. Having watched the film I can safely say that in fact Rob the Mob does not suck, it is very much the opposite of that.

The entire experience was weirdly like a grown up field trip. We had to check in with our minder, there was a strictly enforced no outside snacks policy and the key to the bathroom is attached to a very large stick. All of the cliques are represented, the cool kids, the preppy kids, and the quite anti-social ones sitting in the back silently judging everyone (Hi!). The dress code ranged from t-shirts and jeans all the way to full on rock star, which was utterly amazing. I want to be these women, with their funky boots and killer hair, when I grow up. We got herded in, the lights went dim and the movie started. So let’s do this thing.

I have to say I loved Rob the Mob. It was adorable, which is not an adjective I usually use in the context of mafia movies but this one earned it. It was also funny, fast passed and surprisingly sweet for a movie featuring legit wise guys, former junkies and an uzi. Ever since Faye Dunnaway’s pencil thin eyebrows and Warren Beatty’s hair smoldered their way across the screen armed with tommy guns and a reckless disregard for human life, there has been something incredibly cool about the lovers on crime spree.

Unfortunately for them, Rosie and Tommy the young lovers of this film only wish they were half that cool.

We all know those people who get so caught up in their own narrative and self-created mythology that they completely reject reality and substitute their own, because in famous last words everywhere, “They got this”. Rosie and Tommy are almost painfully clueless, they flail about so caught up in their own narrative that they are blinded to the realities of exactly what the consequences of their actions might be. They are Bonny and Clyde, Romeo and Juliet, Lloyd and Harry, all rolled up into one explosive mess. From the moment they appear on the screen, cracked out of their minds and incredibly ineptly attempting to rob a florists you know this can only end terribly for them but at the same time you can’t help but watch and laugh at their antics. When they launch their crime spree to take advantage of the no guns in mafia social club rule, you know it’s only a matter of time before it all blow up in their faces.

When they stumble across a secret that has the potential to take down an entire mafia family? It’s like giving Homer Simpson nuclear launch codes.

All of the performances were spot on. I was seriously impressed by everyone in this film even Ray Romano, who I had a serious hate on from Everyone Loves Raymond, was great. Michael Pitt and Nina Arianda perfectly captured the reckless immortality that comes with being young, in love and totally out of their depth. Andy Garcia somehow made Big Al (the main mob guy) the most sympathetic character in the whole thing, which is pretty extraordinary since he was nominally the bad guy. Though I have to admit my favorite performances were the varying levels of WTF expressed by the mob guys as they literally could not process that anyone would seriously be dumb enough to rob them.

In a lot of ways Rob the Mob is a movie in love with the past, with nostalgia for the New York that existed in the early 90’s as the once all powerful mafia was systematically dismantled by determined feds, most publicly in the form of the John Gotti trial. Gotti’s prosecution mesmerized the city. People read about it day after day and as the giants fell and the mob city narrative was put to bed. , not only was the film itself nostalgic, but the characters within the movie were themselves nostalgic for their own more innocent pasts.

I don’t having a rating system yet, so I will give this movie and thumbs up a basket of kittens and bottle of scotch. It earned all three.