Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lansky’ on Amazon Prime, an American Gangster Saga Starring Harvey Keitel (2024)

Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Lansky is a gangster drama lost somewhere among The Irishman, The Many Saints of Newark and, uh, Capone? Yeah, sure, Capone. It’s a BOATS (Based On A True Story) movie in which Harvey Keitel plays Meyer Lansky, a real-life mobster who helped form the notorious National Crime Syndicate and established hugely successful casino-gambling operations. He inspired characters in The Godfather and was a supporting player in Bugsy, Havana and Mobsters. But he wasn’t the guy who put bullets in ya — he was an ingenious financial accountant who figured out whether a guy was more valuable alive or dead. So maybe that makes his story different from most gangster sagas?

LANSKY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “Is there such a thing as organized crime?” a voice asks Lansky. “I have no knowledge on the subject,” he lies. Sweet intro! Are you hooked? Cut to David Stone (Sam Worthington), on a payphone, calling his wife, apologizing for the bounced check. They’re separated. She’s mad. He’s desperate. He says he’ll have more money soon. He’s doing some book signings, he says. He’s lying. He’s in Miami. It’s 1981. He’s staying in a dumpy motel. He’s actually there to meet Lansky. He’s going to write the notorious former gangster’s biography. Lansky’s 80. He’s dying. He’s going to tell Stone all his secrets but he has to promise not to publish them until after he’s dead. Or else. He agrees. They have a deal.

They sit down in a diner and Lansky orders them tongue sandwiches and “an assortment of pickles.” “The usual then,” the waitress says. Stone says nothing. What’s he going to do, tell a cold-blooded mofo that can have him killed that he just ordered a gross-ass hurl-worthy lunch? This is when the flashbacks start. NEW YORK CITY, 1912, we read, groaning quietly at the prospect of covering 70 years in less than two hours. Lansky’s a kid, watching guys gamble on sidewalk dice games. He started figuring out probabilities and tells and how the game was rigged, which is when he learned an important lesson: you don’t play the game, you control it.

Years go by. Lansky runs games and rings and things and his old pal Ben “Bugsy” Siegel (David Cade) likes to kill the hell out of folks, so he’s the enforcer. Together, they lead NYC’s Jewish mob. Lansky can smell a cooked book and a skimmed till from leagues away — you can’t get that stuff by a numbers guy. Lansky gets married to Anne (AnnaSophia Robb), and they have some kids; their hearts break when their oldest son is diagnosed with cerebral palsy, something Lansky can’t control. He connects with Italian gangster Lucky Luciano (Shane McRae) and they form the infamous National Crime Syndicate and its infamous enforcement sub-org, Murder Inc. Then they dance in fields of daisies and play with puppies and chase butterflies and beat the crap out of some NYC-based Nazis, but only one of these things is true.

Back in the diner, Stone’s jaw drops at Lansky’s frankness. This old man, though, he’s full of wisdom. “You do what you can to feel alive,” he says. “You wanna conquer your weaknesses, keep ’em in plain sight.” “This world is made of shades of gray. It’s never black and white.” “Always hit ’em first.” Meanwhile, 35 minutes in, we meet some FBI guys who are investigating Lansky. They think he’s hidden $300 million, and they’re gonna find it. Also meanwhile, we’re supposed to care about Stone. He misses his kids and his ex isn’t thrilled with him. He meets a nice woman at the motel, Maureen (Minka Kelly), and have a drink and kiss and crap. This guy, he’s a sad sack, but his Members Only jacket must make him irresistible. It’s only a matter of time until the Feds figure out what’s happening and lean on Stone. I’m pretty sure they’re not impressed by his Members Only jacket.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I’ve already mentioned a bunch of relevant references — it really does have that minor-movie-about-a-major-gangster vibe like 2020’s Capone — but here’s another: Lansky swipes a kill-a-guy-in-the-woods scene right out of Miller’s Crossing.

Performance Worth Watching: It’s nice to see Keitel in a meaty role again, and he enlivens his bon mot-laden dialogue with some spirited line readings and a subtly sinister tone maintaining a sense of unease that keeps the movie from being dry as a Death Valley cow skull.

Memorable Dialogue: Lansky, fortune-cookie ticker-tape machine: “When you lose your money, you lose nothing. When you lose your health, you lose something. When you lose your character, you lose everything.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing more than face-mashing.

Our Take: Lansky sits on the fence between interesting and inconsequential. It’s fun to experience Keitel portray a man in deep twilight who continues to define everything in his life in terms of strength and weakness — the transactional nature of his personality. There’s depth in the performance, shades and sleights of hand rendering it ever so slightly outside the usual gangster-movie tropes. But the screenplay hampers Keitel a bit as it parades flashback anecdotes like it’s Meyer Lansky’s Greatest Hits. There were too many moments of consequence in his life to do all of it justice in two hours — Lansky’s relationship with Israel is the story’s most unique component, and it’s terribly underdeveloped.

Writer/director Eytan Rockaway — co-scripting with Robert Rockaway — attempts to cram too much stuff into the film ultimately undermines the tension between Lansky and Stone, and between Stone and the FBI. Stone’s wrestling with the ethical conundrum he finds himself in — if he harbors Lansky’s secrets, he’ll probably write a bestseller; or he could help the Feds nail a true bad guy — is the meat of the drama, and Rockaway doesn’t fully capitalize on it, pumping air into the tube only to let it leak out with a whimper. He does deploy a few third-act twists that are keenly understated, and are more effective than flashbacks to bloody mob murders and other boilerplate stuff. And then (gasp, pant) he concludes with a stupid postscript that muddles the portrait of a complex man that came before it, almost lionizing Lansky as a hero of capitalism. That one’s a head-scratcher, but then again, capitalism isn’t exactly an avenue of high moral virtue, is it?

Our Call: STREAM IT. So Lansky‘s kind of a mess. But Keitel makes it a mostly endearing one. Corral your expectations.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Watch Lanksyon Amazon Prime