Ex-cons and lovers Tommy (Michael Pitt) and Rosie (Nina Arianda) tramp around the early-’90s outer boroughs running a string of stickups on Mafia social clubs, the kind of places geriatric gangsters gather to play rummy. Seeking payback on behalf of his wronged dad, Uzi-packing Tommy makes the aging goodfellas disrobe to their tighty whities—naturally, the strangest details in this pulled-from-the-Post tale are true ones.
Early on, the film bristles with endorphins and oddness. Between shifts at the debt-collection call center where they work, the couple giddily sneaks away to attend the John Gotti trial, admiring Sammy the Bull’s middle-finger-to-the-Man chutzpah. But what starts as a charming two-hander (with more than a little in common with True Romance) gets lost as the supporting cast multiplies. A newspaper reporter (Ray Romano) and the Feds get involved, and by the time mob boss Big Al (Andy Garcia) starts waxing on about how mortadella is “the caviar of bolognas,” you wish he’d just put us all out of our misery.
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