When I first heard HBO was putting out a film on the life of Myer Lansky starring Richard Dreyfuss, who I really admire, my initial reaction was can he pull this off? I totally underestimated his abilityas an actor. Part of my thinking was within the look-a-like department.But with Ricard Drefyuss, along with Joshua Praw and Ryan Merriman (who both play the younger Lansky) I felt that director John McNaughton,along with Richard Dreyfus' ability to clone the movements and essential dramatic aspect, for his portrayal of Myer Lansky made this film work for me. With Anthony LaPaglia (as Charles "Lucky "Luciano),and the incomparable Eric Roberts (as Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel), as the frosting on the cake. While I really admired Warren Beatty's version of Siegel (Bugsy 1991) Robert's performance will grow on you in a different positive way. The fact that Myer Lansky outlived all of his contemporaries, without ever getting convicted of a crime, is an amazing thing in of itself. His ability to constantly evade, truth in life, was enough to get me interested in his story, along with the fact that I had read the books by Uri Dan and Dennis Eisenberg piqued my interest even further. Some have said the screen writers miss a lot the factual points of Myer Lansky's life, but how can we truly argue this point, when we have no concrete idea of what these points were? I watched the original airing of Lansky on February 27th, 1999 on HBO. I do not take to a lot of movies right away but the more I watched "Lansky" the more it grew on me. I now consider it one of my favorite films. On the negative side I wish the film could have been much longer, with more dramatic detail (whether these details were true or not) While the film does show Lansky's initial meeting with Anna Citron, the film does not extrapolate on her eventual outcome. Another thing to consider is if dramatic films covered all the absolute truths,they would lose some of their entertainment value (for me) I have documentaries for that area. The cinematography, along with the orchestral soundtrack, along with the popular hits of that time period are also superb." Lansky" also does a credible job of capturing the period settings (e.g. turn of the century lower east side) I highly recommend the film "Lansky"
Review of Lansky
