Kill the Irishman: Jonathan Hensleigh

I think the greatest part of the legacy that surrounds Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas is that ever since its release, all other mafia films seem pale in comparison. Goodfellas was such a perfectly executed and realized film that every other mafia movie since seem derivative. And so, how do you grade a film like Jonathan Hensleigh's Kill the Irishman in a post-Goodfellas world? The film is a biopic of Danny Greene, the notorious Irish-American mafia boss of 1970s Cleveland. The film charts his life from his beginnings as a simple longshoreman to one of America's most powerful and feared mobsters. After an arrest early on in his life, Greene also became an FBI informant who would use his links to get his rivals and enemies arrested. As his power grew and grew, the other mafia dons decided that Greene was too much of a hassle, so a contract was taken out on his life. The problem was...no matter how they tried to kill Danny Greene, he somehow managed to survive. The man survived multiple assassination attempts and even managed to dispatch several of his would-be assassins. This speaks to the most curious part of Greene's character: he believed himself to be a descendant of "Celtic Warriors." Fiercely proud of his Irish pride, he saw himself like a Celtic folk hero immortalized in ballads and songs. The film seems to suggest that Greene's life was predetermined (in one scene, Greene jokes that he won't die until the Lord says it's his time). Hensleigh regards Greene as a larger than life character who fought for, earned, and lost the American Dream. So, if Goodfellas was an attempt to accurately portray a gangster, Kill the Irishman was an attempt to immortalize one.

7/10