The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight | Jerry Orbach, Leigh Taylor-Young

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight | Jerry Orbach, Leigh Taylor-Young | Bought This For A Friend

vhs video:

The Gang That Coul...

	The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight Jerry Orbach, Leigh Taylor-Young Mgm/Turner Movie Classics, 1997 average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Take a glance at the credits and you'll see that director James Goldstone's 1971 comedy The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight is the work of some mighty impressive names. Screenwriter Waldo Salt had already won an Oscar for Midnight Cowboy, and would go on to write Coming Home and Serpico. Jimmy Breslin, upon whose book the movie is based, was a celebrated New York newspaper columnist. The cast includes a young Robert DeNiro, Jerry Orbach (decades before being unforgettably cast as Det. Lennie Briscoe in Law & Order), film veteran Lionel Stander, the very appealing Leigh Taylor-Young, and even Herve Villechaize (yes, Tattoo from Fantasy Island, except here his every line of dialogue has been dubbed by someone without an accent). Unfortunately, the film is decidedly less than the sum of its parts. The cast acquits itself adequately, notwithstanding some heavy-handed stereotypes (Jo Van Fleet, as the Orbach character's knife-happy mama, wears out her welcome early in the first reel). But Goldstone's background was mostly in television, and he handles the film with a heavy hand more suited to a bad sit-com. The story, such as it is, concerns the efforts of the hapless Kid Sally Palumbo (Orbach) and his dumb cronies to usurp mob boss Baccala's (Stander) power. Sally and his gang are inept--it's they, not Baccala, who keep getting knocked off--but not as lame as the movie, which relies on obvious gags, poorly-timed physical shtick, and an unconvincing romance between DeNiro's Italian bike racer-con man and Taylor-Young's Angela (as Sally's sister, although she's about as Italian as Mary Tyler Moore). Some of the bits are amusing, especially those featuring a lion (don't ask) in Sally's charge, but by and large, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight is a dull disappointment. The DVD includes no bonus material. --Sam Graham

for more information click here

funny movie

loved this movie. I remembered it from the time it first was in theaters but never saw the DVD anywhere. The stereotypes are hysterical.

Bought This For A Friend

I got this as a gift for a friend and he was really happy with it. He laughed so hard!

Really, it isn't all that bad

This flick is getting panned by reviewers who measure it with the yardstick of DeNiro's other work and Orbach's later greatness as Lennie Briscoe in "Law & Order", but if the truth be known, it's a precursor of "Johnny Dangerously". Orbach plays Kid Sally Palumbo, a "young Turk" of the Mob, resentful of his boss Baccala (Lionel Stander), who has the cliche "moustache Pete" old-line contempt for Kid Sally's small faction. Urged on by his grandmother Big Mama (Jo Van Fleet), he follows her advice not to take anything from anybody. When the Palumbo faction is finally rounded up by the cops, she has a lot to say to news cameras after Kid Sally just flips them the bird. Her first two bits of invective make broadcast as they watch themselves on the news, but then censors start to bleep her out. At that point, she leaps to her feet and shakes her fist at the screen, denying that she'd ever said "beep". The later work "Johnny Dangerously" was dismissed as "puerile" by reviewers and so it was. So's this one, but there's a certain entertainment value to "dopey fun", as you see every night of the week on TV's "reality shows". But they don't get slammed very much. I wonder why.

for more information click here

reviews: page 1, 2

products you might be interested in