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I love gangster movies when they’re well-done, on paper I liked the cast of “Mob Cops” (available in select theaters and on VOD beginning Friday, April 25) and I’ve enjoyed films from actor/producer/director Danny A. Abeckaser in the past (my review of his “The Engineer” here), but man oh man is this one a dog.
David Arquette and Jeremy Luke are our titular “Mob Cops” Sammy Canzano and Leo Benetti, respectively. This dirty duo gets into bed with gangsters Sherman (ex-NYPD detective and Arby’s pitchman Bo Dietl) and Galiano (Joseph Russo, he played a young Joe Pesci in Clint Eastwood’s “Jersey Boys”) to enrich themselves. In the process they get involved with the murder of Josh Hughes (Lorenzo Antonucci), a confidential informant for up-and-up police officer Tim Delgado (Abeckaser) and his partner Jesse (Aussie actor Nathaniel Buzolic). Delgado promises Hughes’ mother Bridget (Deborah Geffner) that he’ll get to the bottom of what happened to her son and bring the perpetrators to justice.
Abeckaser’s direction is reminiscent of The Max Fischer Players’ iteration of “Serpico” from Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore,” i.e. it’s amateurish as all get out. The script from Kosta Kondilopoulos is mostly just a series of exchanges in which our lunkheaded characters tell each other to go f*ck their mothers, which unsurprisingly grows tiresome quickly.
There are two types of performances in the film – ones where actors seem like they’re sleepwalking through the proceedings (Arquette, Abeckaser) and others where the performers devour scenery like they haven’t eaten in a week (Luke, Russo).
I did like the third-act arc involving Benetti attempting to sell the rights of his incriminating memoir to a movie producer and Luke sells his character’s stupidity splendidly, but it’s too little too late.
The Barry Levinson/Robert De Niro collaboration “The Alto Knights” took its lumps from critics (not this one – my review here) and at the box office when it opened last month. “Mob Cops” makes that look like “The Godfather” or “Goodfellas” by comparison.
You nailed the issues with this movie. Coincidentally, I was currently reading the book. (Blood and The Badge), which is also a very disjointed narrative, so this script makes sense. The ending helped, but not enough. The Alto Knights, while still a dog, was indeed much better.