Dustin does Dutch in this overlooked gangster story
By now, The Irishman can proudly claim the title of being one of the most widely-discussed movies this awards season. Thanks to its cast, craftsmanship, and interview tidbits from its legendary director, Martin Scorsese, fewer films have enjoyed such buzz and acclaim in recent years. The movie looks to be Netflix’s top bid for the Oscar this year as it hopes to translate all the critical and audience goodwill into that coveted gold Best Picture statue.
The heart of The Irishman, many agree, can be found in the real-life story which comprises its plot: the reign and eventual taking down of Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). As seen through the eyes of his self-proclaimed killer (Robert De Niro), the movie is not short on either dynamic acting or a compelling story. While it’s one of the best movies the genre has ever produced, in some ways The Irishman is reminiscent of another, lesser-known tale involving a notorious gangster and the young protege who saw everything go down: 1991’s Billy Bathgate.
Directed by Robert Benton, Billy Bathgate stars Loren Dean as the titular character, a young man from the Bronx who catches the eye of well-known gangster Dutch Schultz (Dustin Hoffman). When Dutch offers him a job working in his office, Billy is introduced to a life of crime, money, and power. Pretty soon, however, the stakes are raised and Billy finds himself following Dutch out of town in order to avoid a shakedown. However, an attraction to Dutch’s latest flame Drew Preston (Nicole Kidman) and the question of just how far he’s willing to go for his boss puts Billy’s life into jeopardy.
On the surface and beyond, there’s no disguising how incredibly Disney-fied Billy Bathgate is. Released by the company’s Touchstone arm, the movie is a classic example (and perhaps helped to establish) that even though such titles were geared towards serious, adult fare, there couldn’t help but be some lavish, over-the-top element to them. The movie’s various production values, including the costumes, sets, and dialogue (which includes lines such as “Now there goes a kid with luck”), are all so overly stylized in the ‘spare no expense’ way of filmmaking that had become synonymous with Disney. Beyond just the lines, all of the plot movements and pacing within the script of Billy Bathgate contain a carefully measured quality, leaving little room for spontaneity or anything remotely organic in terms of storytelling. When one character utters a specific piece of dialogue, you know it will cost him his life; when another exits the room with a certain look in his eye, you know you won’t see him again. In many ways, you can envision Billy Bathgate existing in the same universe as the following year’s Newsies, with both featuring tales of idealistic youth coming of age in the face of larger-than-life figures that helped shape and mold their futures in ways they’d never anticipated.
At the same time, to say that Billy Bathgate is the kind of movie which plays it safe is an understatement. Quite simply, it doesn’t. For all it’s big studio movie trappings, Billy Bathgate manages to be stark and harsh with the best of them. The film is a competent gangster tale with themes of loyalty, romance, and revenge all driving the plot to an exhilarating finish line. You have to admire Billy Bathgate for being a movie that isn’t content to totally play by studio rules. Kidman bravely delivers a full frontal nude scene, while Bruce Willis’s supporting turn as a double crossing associate sees the actor spending most of his screen time being tied to a chair with his feet in a quick-drying bucket of cement, with both Dutch and the movie prolonging his death for as long as possible. Meanwhile, Billy Bathgate takes every chance it can to showcase Schultz’s uber-violent tendencies, which are spurred on by a heavy dosage of erratic behavior. This leads to some pretty elaborate deaths throughout the movie which are made all the more shocking by the main character’s unpredictable nature. Yes, this is Disney by way of Touchstone, and there is never a single doubt about that. Yet the combination of the dreamy, fantasy-like costumes and sets mixed with the upfront darkness of the world being depicted results in one of the most oddly watchable releases ever to bear the studio’s name.
For all its noticeable differences in tone, Billy Bathgate’s acting is top of the line all the way through. In lesser hands, the role of Billy would have been a forgettable one, but Dean embodies the kind of wide-eyed wonder and deep conflict that’s necessary to keep the movie on its feet. The actor’s style works well alongside Hoffman’s frighteningly committed turn as Dutch. Mixing the maniacal with the concentrated, the two-time Oscar winner goes to town as the movie’s central figure, honing in on the real man’s charm and ruthlessness, which he gets down to perfection. If Willis hams it up a bit too much, Steven Hill (as Dutch’s long-suffering right-hand businessman) does incredibly solid work grounding the material. Yet Kidman is the one who really surprises as the gangster moll with more wisdom and depth than society would give her credit for.
Despite Benton’s direction and a top script from Tom Stoppard (who had adapted the E. L. Doctorow source novel), Billy Bathgate failed to impress either critics or audiences when it was first released. A number of reasons were all pointed to as the reason for the movie’s failure, not least of all the various shifts in tone. The film did manage to earn some awards acclaim for its acting, as Hill found himself nominated for a couple of top critics awards, while Kidman earned her first Golden Globe nod.
By now everyone familiar with the movie knows of the struggles on the part of those associated with it, including Hoffman’s battles with Benton (resulting in delays and a ballooning budget) and Doctorow’s unhappiness with the final product. Still, you could say that Billy Bathgate earns its place in that mini gangster sub-genre of the early ‘90s which sought to revisit the world of gangster movies in the most formalist of ways. Titles such as Mobsters (essentially a bunch of pretty boys playing dress up) and Oscar (forever hilarious and criminally underrated) also belong in this group. Yet Billy Bathgate had something those films didn’t. Beyond a final act which amps up the suspense as it blends the film’s two sides together wonderfully, the movie explored both the glamour and the grime of the gangster world. The way the movie shows how the two worlds managed to coexist through the eyes of youth only accentuates both the curious sense of wonder and the thrill of the danger.
Billy Bathgate is now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Kino Lorber.