Rob the Mob

Rob the Mob has a lot of things going for it: great dialogue, charismatic actors, interesting characters, and an engaging plot. Unfortunately, it's all nearly negated by some fairly confusing scenes, pacing issues, and the incredibly short-sighted decisions of the main characters.

Rob the Mob is one of the few movies I've looked into that actually got favorable reviews. That doesn't seem to happen often. It started off pretty interesting. The dialogue was well-written, and all the characters were interesting. I liked all the different people at the collection agency. The boss was a little hard to get a handle on, though.

It was really sloppy of them to leave the Uzi in the car. I kept wondering if their boss was going to turn them in. That was the main problem I had with the movie, though: it was really sloppy of them to, basically everything. Why did Tommy keep yelling "this is for Frank Uva" at every robbery? Seriously, is there any better way to identify yourself than doing that? Why didn't he wear a mask? Was he not afraid about them coming after him in the slightest? I felt like they should've ditched the car after the first hit, too. And what was Rosie thinking telling everything to the reporter? They made such horrible decisions that it was really hard to be in their corner at all.

The robberies themselves were pretty awkward. The director said he liked the comedic aspect that Pitt brought to them, but I didn't get that while watching the movie at all. It was just cringe-inducing. The movie was engaging for the most part, but there were a few times where it just fell into this weird tar pit of slowness, like when Tommy proposed to Rosie - which, by the way, what a terrible proposal! It was shortsighted of them not to leave when the journalist told them to, too. They should've listened to him.

It was pretty cold of the FBI agent not to help them out. I liked his character, though, and Ray Romano's. Pretty much all of the actors were great, except for Al's grandson. That performance didn't seem very authentic. I didn't understand what Al was talking about when he told the feds not to embarrass him in front of his family or else. I just had no idea what was going on, other than I knew he was talking to the feds. He really lost me with that long winding story about "there's a guy in the neighborhood who doesn’t leave his house much," etc. I figured it out when I watched the commentary, though.

The director said he wanted it to be a free and easy set, and told people not to worry about continuity stuff like eye lines or having items in the same hand. I don't intentionally look for that kind of thing, but it often sticks out to me, especially the eye lines; those drive me crazy if they're off, so it was really interesting that I didn't notice any problems at all in this one, and they weren't even worried about them.

Visually the movie looked good; I liked the style. I really hated the memory flashbacks, though. Maybe if they had only been used like, once each for Al and Tommy they would have been okay, but they were way overdone. I was really disappointed that Tommy and Rosie died at the end. It was a little confusing the way they did it, too. All you saw was broken glass, and then the sky, and you're like, "What, is that it? Are they dead? Is the movie over?" Of course then you see the picture of the real Rosie and Tommy (I really liked that) and it says they were murdered, so you know for sure what happened, but it was confusing. It makes total sense that the mob killed them, but I still didn't want it to happen. The director said they did all the glass and everything in post, which isn't surprising given the totally computer-generated look of it, which I didn't like at all. It just didn't fit; it was so out of place with nothing else in the movie looking like that.

I feel like Sal dropped the ball when he didn't do anything to Rosie and Tommy after Al told him to find them, though. He said you don't kill flies, you scare them, but they didn't even try to scare Rosie and Tommy. Maybe if they had they wouldn't have kept robbing the clubs. They didn't get a whole lot from the first hit, anyway. And how silly of them was it to try to fence all the jewelry at the same place? Who would do that?

I liked the scenes where we saw the inner workings of the mob, and I especially loved the guy who knew everyone's schedule. That guy was great. I didn't really get the point of the scene where Al called all the guys in, though. I never really caught the name of Tommy's dad, even though he kept yelling it and it was written on the mailbox - which was a really weird mailbox that didn't look like a mailbox, too. I was confused when Al was talking about how he killed the guy that ran the north shore, and I thought maybe he was talking about Tommy's dad. It didn't help that Tommy said the mob killed his father; so I thought his dad was skimming off the top from the mob and that's why he got killed.

There were a lot of things about the movie that stood out as great, but it was also confusing in a lot of places, and ultimately, I just can't get past Tommy and Rosie's bad decisions.