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Mean Streets (1973)
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After a low-budget apprenticeship served under B-movie king Roger Corman, Mean Streets was director Martin Scorsese's breakthrough film. Drawing on his upbringing in New York's Little Italy, the semi-autobiographical story concerns two friends — Charlie (Harvey Keitel), the older of the two and a debt-collector for the Mob, and tearaway hoodlum Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), who's in hock to loan sharks and a drain on Charlie's patience and reputation. Opening with a home movie-style, 8mm montage set to the Ronettes' Be My Baby, this explicitly European-influenced film establishes Scorsese's masterful use of music, mixing a 1960s pop soundtrack with grubby pool-hall violence. Mean Streets hinges on the power of its lead performances; Keitel exhibits simmering anguish as he struggles to reconcile his religion and lifestyle while dating the epileptic Teresa (Amy Robinson) against his boss's wishes, while the freewheeling De Niro is full of edgy humour, life and barely concealed danger. The result is a keystone of 1970s American cinema. AC
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Tell us what you think
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Running time
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107min
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Country of origin
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US
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Genre
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Drama
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Original language
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English / Italian
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Screenplay
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Martin Scorsese, Mardik Martin, from a story by Martin Scorsese
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Theatrical distributor
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Blue Dolphin
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UK cinema certificate
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18
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UK cinema release date
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January 2005
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Subtitling information
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In English, Italian with subtitles
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Film certification logos reproduced by kind permission of BBFC |
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