LeonLouisRicci Colorful, violent, a good cast, and excellent period recreation highlight this depression era Gangster Movie. Directed by Actor Bill Duke, it is at times talky and languishes a bit, but the action pieces are stylish and visceral.Guilty of repetitive speech making and some over acting, the Movie waivers between High Camp and a serious Character Study. Tim Roth almost steals the Show with a sleazy, disgusting, foul-mouthed portrayal of Dutch Schultz, but Laurence Fishburne as Bumpy Johnson, and Vanessa Williams in a supporting Role make their mark.The Film is never boring even though it tends to drag in spots and is over-long to a fault. Overall it is a mostly fictitious account that is worth a watch for its style, pizazz, great period detail, and brutal Gangster violence that the Genre demands.

Tss5078 People who have seen American Gangster or are regular viewers of the TV show, Mobsters, will know who Bumpy Johnson was and know the story behind Hoodlum. For those of you who don't, Johnson was a member of an organized crime group, in Harlem, during the 1930's. He was also the man who mentored and inspired Denzel Washington's character of Frank Lucas in American Gangster. Long before that film, the story of Bumpy Johnson was told in Hoodlum. This was one of those little told stories about the mafia that started out very strong. Unfortunately, I felt that the writers went into far too much detail at certain points in the film and by the end it was definitely dragging on. Laurence Fishburne stars as Johnson and did an adequate job, my problem with his has always been he lacks emotion in his acting. In my humble opinion this should automatically disqualify him from certain things and this probably should have been one of those things. Tim Roth is Dutch Schultz and while Schultz had a reputation for being a character, Roth went a little over the top with it, but was still very entertaining. My favorite performance was of course the one by Andy Garcia as Lucky Luciano, but he really wasn't in the film much and that's a shame, because nobody plays a crime boss better than hen does. Hoodlum is a wild ride about an incredible true story, but as a film, it was a mix of terrific scenes and some slower unnecessary elements. As a film it's not the best, but it's worth watching just for the amazing story that is being told.

winner55 This became one of my favorite gangster films when I first saw it, and watching it yet again after viewing very dissimilar projects like the Martin Landau Joe Bonnano biography or the "Valachi Papers", the "Godfather" or "Scarface" (both versions), "The Untouchables" (either version) or "Public Enemy", I've become pretty well convinced that this is the 'ultimate' gangster film, perhaps the only film that can compete with Scorsese's "Goodfellas" for the claim to be the best and most representative film of the genre.What makes that especially interesting to me is that "Goodfellas" works by being almost obsessively realistic about organized crime - it is too much of a 'real life' to dismiss as pure psychopathology, yet clearly not enough of a living to want to throw one's self into it after learning something of its gritty details (such as the lack of any retirement other than a grave or a prison cell)."Hoodlum", on the other hand, is the quintessential Hollywood genre film - more the legend than the fact, but hoping the legend can make the case better than the fact. The central protagonist presents just the right balance of determination, ruthless violence, and moral ambiguity, including a softer side or undeniable richness and complexity. The heroes and villains are clearly defined; the justification for the heroes to find themselves on the 'wrong side of the law' is unarguable. The gangster film has long been a genre in which Americans could work through their worst fears of living in a nation of many ethnicities; it just makes sense that the perfect gangster film would be about African Americans - the one ethnic group that is still denied total participation in our culture.The period detail is excellent and the direction is solidly professional; so is the acting; in fact that is a major point in favor of this film, and all such films, that all the participants approach their work with as careful and as a skilled a professionalism as possible. They were clearly determined right from the start to make a good movie, and they did. Surprisingly, very few Hollywood films are made with this attitude, since it's assumed there that most audiences don't care. well this audience member certainly cares, and I both admire and respect the professional when it appears.Beyond the richness of its issues, the film is also very entertaining. Yes, it is violent; it is also humorous, romantic, dramatic, and even, at times, philosophical. Much like "The Godfather" (which is a bit over-long to my taste), "hoodlum" is a 'complete package' gangster film that will leave you with a sense of having experienced life a little deeper than if you hadn't seen it.

idcook I wanted to love this film if only because it presented a bit of Black Americana that had previously gone all but entirely unmentioned. Like many Americans I've been developed to have a strong sense of attraction to both real and fictional crime personalities. Cagney, Robinson, Bogart. Capone, Luciano, Gotti… You know the drill.This is probably why I wanted to love it, but the film just wouldn't allow me to. It never gets exciting enough.In Hoodlum the main characters; Johnson, Queenie, Hewlett, Schultz, Luciano; are all played just well enough to give you a basic outline of how the real life persons were related to one another. Otherwise they're basically stock representations of what Hollywood seems to always believe everyone wants to see in genre crime films, or maybe just something Dukes felt was necessary to make it fit the genre along with all the the typical gobbledy gook that's SUPPOSED to cause you to react in a certain way. "Ewwww! He places a bit of human anatomy on the night club table!" "Oh my! The poor man has distanced himself from those closest to him in order to fulfill a noble, if cruel, mission!"Yet it never gets horrible enough to really make you feel it. A woman is murdered, but you don't see anything beyond her fright. Even her boyfriend's reaction at finding her body isn't given enough attention for you to understand what he feels. You're always 'watching' other people react to situations… You're never in a position to see their feelings or to truly feel anything yourself.Romance comes together weakly and ends weakly. Chattering tommy gun montages float but no bodies shiver. Death comes and goes like Spring rain.Roth's Schultz is, to my mind's eye, the only thing near a believable performance. He dresses, speaks and conducts himself much the way the real Schultz would've. The 'race' issue is weirdly half-hyped throughout this film though it is presented in a manner easily recognizable as commonplace during the period. The film makes the mistake of making this almost too important a part of the story by having it pop into the script when it hardly matters. That a corrupt 1930s chief of police is also a die-hard racist and some black doesn't like it and says so is not quite as cutting edge as it might've been 25 years ago.I'm no longer amused by Luciano being shown as the dapper smoothie. The real person wasn't as dapper as he was clever.All the same, it isn't likely that Luciano would've had a man shot in the back of his own limousine while he's sitting right next to him protecting his face from blood-splatter with his spotless Panama hat. Do you know how much a Panama hat cost? They should've thrown in a joke to help that scene along.The Dewey portrayal was totally ridiculous. His relationship to Luciano was never so chummy as the film wants to suggest. Far from it in fact.What the film did do is give me a thirst to learn more about the real people. It was nice to learn why Clarence Williams' Hewlett character stood so firmly with Schultz. (In real life Hewlett's operation had been knocked out of prominence by Queenie's gang); that Queenie had been attracted to Bumpy's style and bravado; that Queenie sent a message to Schultz while he lay dying in a hospital helps to lend some validity to this movie's suggestion of how some troubles may have been fomented between Schultz and Luciano.They skip over valuable and interesting detail in favor of weak emotional inference. Offering a a touch of supposedly, "meaningful-to-blacks" religious suggestion. An odd blend of Christianity and voodoo. Some grinning church toady at the start and finish of the story. Who really needed this? Attaching blacks to religion is just a longtime stereotype in America anyway. Everybody knows it, so please stop already!They had everything they needed but didn't handle the pieces well enough to make this the winner it might've been. Even the music sounded as though it had been lifted from Morricone and Coppola. Why no Ellington; Basie; Bird???? What the heck ? ? ? Bumpy might've had pretensions but it's very likely that he preferred to listen to the hot music of his time.Pardon me. It's my first time here. Not the worst thing I've ever seen but I'd suggest you watch it in bed.