Rob the Mob is both everything right and everything wrong with current indie cinema.
It tells the story of Tommy and Rosie Uva (Michael Pitt and Nina Arianda) who, in 1992, were reformed addicts that robbed NYC mafia clubs while the Mafioso sat on their hands because they were being watched extra closely during the Gotti trial.
Director Raymond De Felitta drops us right into their passionate, co-dependent, mumbling, poor, outskirts of the city brand of love. Tommy argues about when it’s proper to say “I love you” before he tries to rob a flower store on Valentine’s Day. When they’re caught and Tommy receives jail time and Rosie doesn’t, Rosie, frantic, snotty and high, climbs over the courtroom table to kiss her man one last time, promising to wait for him. That’s the “everything right” part: Arianda and Pitt are a fantastic team.
Arianda is new to me (she’s been cast in the will-it-ever-shoot? Janis Joplin biopic by Sean Durkin, director of Martha Marcy May Marlene). She is, what’s one of those critical words?, ah yes, a revelation: loud, compassionate and loyal. Rosie moves from unstable to stable, landing a job at a collections call center. Her boss (Griffin Dunne) loves to hire former crooks and give ‘em loads of pep – seemingly masking his ploy for very cheap labor with tap dances and razz-ma-tazz – and even offers Tommy a job. While Rosie excels at collections because she loves talking empty threats to people for her pay – a shakedown – Tommy mostly tells folks how to get extensions and tips on how to keep the collectors from actually collecting.
This is where the Bonnie and Clyde New York Post true narrative comes in. Despite Rosie expelling the virtues of hard work, Tommy blows off work one day to attend the Gotti trial (which was open to the public). He listens to the testimony of protected witnesses and writes down the street addresses to the mafia social clubs. Tommy peeks in on them and decides to ditch the phone calls for good and make the easy robbing money.
De Felitta plays the robberies for laughs. Indeed there is some humor in Mafioso tuffs not being able to do anything to stop a really incompetent street urchin – a kid that brought an Uzi to a word fight. However the more De Felitta takes us into the mafia and various other agencies – journalism and the FBI – it takes us away from Pitt and Arianda. That’s to the film’s detriment.
This is where the “everything wrong” portion takes hold. There are two characters that are so extraneous to the story of interest, but played by identifiable people (Andy Garcia as an aging made man, the head of the family; and Ray Romano as a New York Post beat reporter) that they continue to pull us away from the engaging couple. Every scene feels like the actors are there to fill a quota to get the movie made – because a robbing the mafia movie would probably never get made with just Michael (wrong side of Brad) Pitt, newcomer Arianda and 80s icon Dunne, but no Corleones or GoodFellas.
However, Garcia’s Al is written and performed as a man who just wants to make some dinner. Garcia waxes philosophical with his grandson and hides behind a beard. Similarly Romano’s presence seems to only be to offer a critique on the FBI agents (Frank Whaley and Samira Wiley) who are tailing them.
Once there are multiple characters outside of our core unit, Rob the Mob no longer seems to know what it wants to be. It’s a shame really. This couple is a slow motion kiss – while garbage falls around them – from being a solid Sid & Nancy fringe, manic, but loveable grunge couple. Instead they’re a fringe, manic, loveable grunge couple who are surrounded by garbage storylines and only get a slow-motion Sin City style assassination.
Brian Formo is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @BrianEmilFormo.
