Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more

 

Married to the Mob (1988)

Director: Jonathan Demme

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

When philandering Mafia hitman 'Cucumber' Frank de Marco is killed by his boss Tony 'The Tiger' Russo, his widow Angela (Pfeiffer) decides to abandon her stockbroker-belt home (bursting with stolen goods) and start anew with a job and a dingy room on the Lower East Side. Easier said than done: obsessively amorous Tony (Stockwell) courts her with a vengeance, while FBI agent Mike Downey (Modine) suspects that she planned Frank's death with Tony. If the slim plot of Demme's romantic black comedy lacks the outrageous panache and exhilarating twists of Something Wild, the film nevertheless delights through its sheer good-humoured glee in all that is kitsch or off-the-wall, and its wealth of inventive incidental details. While it's all relentlessly shallow, the performances, music and gaudy visuals provide a fizzy vitality for which many other directors would give their right arm. Amazingly, for all its hip anarchy, it's finally an oddly old-fashioned slice of entertainment. Preston Sturges might have approved.

Author: GA

Time Out Film Guide


What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Related articles




Features

Do overs!

Do overs!

After Race to Witch Mountain, what should Disney remake next?

Gray's anatomy

James Gray wants to push buttons—again.

The next big thing?

Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.

Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema

So you think you can dance, comrade?

Puppet master

Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.

Socratic method

Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.

Wander woman

Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.

Oscars

Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.