Bugsy (1991)

The story of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel has mystified many filmmakers through the years. It is a real-life story that was destined for Hollywood fantasy. Siegel was a 1940s gangster who got pretty much anything he wanted. Despite having a wife and two daughters, he carried on a relationship with actress Virginia Hill, who was dating mobster Joe Adanis when the affair began. He had many friends in Hollywood and infamously tried to get into the movies as an actor, even making a disastrous screen test. Most famously, he has been widely credited as the original mind behind today’s Las Vegas, since he built the Flamingo casino with dirty money right in the middle of the Nevada desert.

The movie Bugsy tells this story, which is a Hollywood fantasy. It portrays Siegel as the anti-hero; a genius with a record. Truly, he had very little to do with the creation of Las Vegas as a business. The Flamingo casino he helped build and run was actually the third casino to be set up in the area, though it was probably the first to make any notable profit, but Bugsy didn’t get involved with the project until it was near completion. The original idea and execution of it belonged to notorious gambler Billy Wilkinson, who inevitably sold his 48% of shares in the company, handing over the reins to Siegel. In order to put its antihero in the best possible light, Wilkinson does not appear in this film.

Nobody can really blame the movie’s approach to the character of Bugsy. Everybody loves a good villain and everybody can root for a good success story, so the two are combined. The first half of the movie devotes itself to Siegel as an already established success. His name in the papers, money spilling out of his pocket and everybody doing what he says if they want to keep breathing, he lives a life intended to be envied. His bosses have moved his operations to Hollywood for what is meant to be a brief stay, but he purchases an extravagant house and sets up permanently.

While on the set of the actual movie Manpower with George Raft and Edward G. Robinson, Siegel first sees actress Virginia Hill and they begin their romance only after he badgers her with incessant calls. The two real people actually met several years earlier, making the movie version of even that part of Bugsy’s life less scandalous than it really was. Annette Bening portrays Hill in a fiery performance made up of appropriate doses of spitfire and glamour. Bening had auditioned for a few Warren Beatty productions in years past, and was strongly considered for an important role in his Dick Tracy, but this was the first time they actually worked together. They make a very convincing on-screen couple, partly because they both are so good at playing massive egos and also because they were having an off-screen romance of their own. They would shortly afterwards be married.

Warren Beatty’s performance as Siegel is arguably the highlight of the film. I also consider it Beatty’s greatest screen role. He was born to play this part, which mirrored his own tabloid-friendly personal life in many ways. His frequent adulterous episodes were well documented, a part of his life that very suddenly ended when he devoted himself entirely to Bening, much to the public’s surprise. He was also known for his scary devotion and unnecessary extravagance when it came to making movies, much like Bugsy’s hard-hitting determination in the film. Although he did not direct Bugsy, his fingerprints are evident in the film’s large-scale glamour, especially in the construction of a life-size replica of the Flamingo, even though it is only featured briefly in the finale. As for Beatty’s actual performance, it is a remarkable achievement. He plays the criminal with vicious aggression and conviction, while also making him persistently likable. The cold, collected anger he displays when anyone calls him Bugsy instead of Ben, or that twinkle in his eye when he decides he’s going to assassinate Mussolini, make the character real and believable, even at points that could have become campy.

Director Barry Levinson had never before made anything so serious, being more well-known for his light dramas like Good Morning, Vietnam and Rain Man. He was a good choice for the story of Bugsy, displaying great depth in his style and pacing. The movie, as a whole, is beautiful to look at and always entertaining. It is a very different product than what I assume would have been made by French director Jean-Luc Godard, who wrote a screenplay intended for Robert de Niro and Diane Keaton. That project was shelved when Keaton lost interest.

Bugsy was made from a screenplay by James Toback, who delivered the final draft six years past deadline. He originally intended to direct the movie himself, but eventually handed it over to Beatty when he realized he was out of his depth. The writing is largely well-done, despite the aforementioned historical inaccuracies. Perhaps my biggest complaint is in the treatment of some of the great supporting characters, like violent gangster Mickey Cohen who becomes Siegel’s faithful right-hand man and Meyer Lansky, the good-hearted crime boss. These characters are left mostly in the background, but are still memorable because of how well they are played by Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley, respectively.

Bugsy is a fun movie because of how easily it fits into the canon of gangster movies that idolize their evil subjects, a genre that is almost as old as film. It was very warmly received at release, earning back its $30 million dollar budget, plus an additional $20 million. The praise from critics was high, comparing the romance between Beatty and Bening to that of Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the classic Bonnie and Clyde. The past twenty years haven’t been as kind to the movie, with most modern critics and bloggers finding it nice to look at, but emotionally inept. Much of the blame is unjustly hurled at Beatty with claims that his acting was over-the-top and inconsistent. As such, it has been mostly forgotten, instead of being ranked among similar modern classics like Scarface and Goodfellas where it belongs.

At the 64^th Academy Awards, Bugsy won Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Beatty), Best Supporting Actor (Keitel, Kingsley), Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score and Best Cinematography. It was also nominated for eight Golden Globes, only winning Best Film-Drama. The current DVD features an extended cut of the film that adds about fifteen minutes of extra footage.