Bugsy (1991)

Starring: Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Harvey Keitel, Ben Kingsley, Elliot Gould, Joe Mantegna, Bebe Neuwirth, and a cameo from Wendie Malick
Grade: A

You know there’s going to be a problem when Mickey Cohen of all people tells our main character that he is going to drive himself crazy.

Summary

In Scarsdale, New York, famous gangster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel says goodbye to his family and drives in his car alone, reciting an acting technique to enunciate every word in the sentence “20 dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet”. Next, he carefully picks out some shirt and tie combinations before going to the elevator of his condominium building. As he tells the worker to take him to the penthouse, the woman in the elevator takes notice. It takes minutes for him to convince her to come with. After he has sex with her, he gets a call from fellow gangster Meyer Lansky (Kingsley), and he tells Meyer to call Charlie Luciano (Bill Graham). Sometime after, Siegel, Meyer, and Charlie are in the back of the car, and Meyer expresses his concerns to Siegel, who doesn’t seem worried in the slightest. They pull up to a building, and Siegel goes inside by his lonesome to meet with Jerry (Anthony Russell). He reminds Jerry how well the three pay him, but Siegel notes that he’s repaid them by stealing from them for the second time in three years, an accusation Jerry denies. Siegel gifts Jerry his own dress shirt, as a way to literally give him the shirt off his back. At the same time that he tells Jerry his shoes don’t match, Meyer and Charlie are still in the car discussing Siegel’s problems respecting money. Following a seemingly pleasant conversation, Siegel shoots and kills Jerry in front of everyone in his office.

In a meeting with all of the other bosses, Charlie gives Siegel advice on how to overtake Jack Dragna (Richard C. Sarafian) in the Southern California rackets. He talks about coming in smooth and acting like he just wants to be a partner. Dragna’s been running it for 20 years with no competition. The only other man in town is Mickey Cohen (Kingsley), though they don’t count him because he’s a one-man gang. Because of this, the only way to move in on Dragna is “amiably”. Joe Adonis (Lewis Van Bergen) adds that they have to be careful because Dragna is a cold-blooded killer. He’s advised to not say anything to set him off, though Siegel is caught smiling when this is said. Following the meeting, Meyer goes over to talk to Siegel about his Los Angeles trip and asks him not to call his friend and movie star George Raft (Mantegna) because it would attract too much attention otherwise. Meyer wants everything done in twelve days (four days out, four days of diplomacy, four days back). Once Meyer leaves, Harry Greenburg wants to talk to Siegel, but he holds off on Harry to say bye to his family. After this, he has a private meeting with Harry, who begs him for $50,000 to ward off all the law enforcement people who are after him. He talks about how bad they all are except for assistant district attorney Allen Stein, but Siegel interrupts to ask what happened to the other $50,000 he just gave him for the armored truck heist. Immediately, Harry admits he blew it all betting at the track. Siegel wonders if Harry intends on snitching on everyone if he doesn’t give him the money, but Harry insists he would never snitch on Siegel because he loves him. Annoyed, Siegel gives him the money, with Harry saying he owes him his life.

Arriving with Inez Malick (Malick) at Union Station in Los Angeles, Siegel exits the train and is greeted by George Raft, who is signing autographs as he waits. George drives Siegel and tells him how he got him a place at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Along with this, he mentions a little bit about Dragna’s operation in town before saying he has to drop Siegel off because he has to go back to the studio. Instead, Siegel wants to go with him to the set, so George takes him with. As George films take after take for 1941’s Manpower, Siegel watches intently and loves every second of it. Bit player Viginia Hill (Bening) asks if she can say a line instead of being mute after a fight sequence, but the director turns her down. Once they cut, Siegel can’t take his eye off her. He strikes up a conversation with her and offers to light her cigarette. After some flirting between the two, Siegel asks George about her, only to find out she’s Joe’s girl and has the nickname “Flamingo”. This could get him killed if he pursued it, but he doesn’t care. He quickly approaches her again, but Virginia knows who he is and mentions how she’s still with Joe. Siegel refers to Joe as an “associate of an associate” rather than a friend and tries to press on. Even when he talks about his wife Esta (Wendy Phillips) and how he does not intend on divorcing her, he still presses on. Regardless, she’s not having it. On the way home, Siegel questions George about getting a screen test and if Virgina has a future in movies, but George changes the subject when they get into his neighborhood as he points out the houses of Lana Turner, Cesar Romero, Gary Cooper, and Lawrence Tibbet. Seeing Tibbet’s house, Siegel has George pull over to it and he gets out to meet him. As the housekeeper goes to get Tibbet, Siegel runs back to the car to get a duffle bag and asks how far they are from George’s house, which is only a half a mile down the road.

Running back into the house, Siegel meets Tibbet, and they exchange pleasantries, though Siegel starts to flip out once Tibbet realizes he is the famed “Bugsy” Siegel and refers to him by his nickname. Thankfully, he calms down once Tibbet pivots and calls him by his given name, but they start to get off topic as Siegel walks around the house curiously as he talks. He talks about staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel and asks if Tibbet likes staying in the bungalows or the suites. When he says the bungalows, Siegel gives him the key to his bungalow and tells Tibbet that he’s buying his house from him. Tibbet insists it’s not for sale, but Siegel inquires how much he paid for it. Years ago, Tibbet bought it for $35,000, but he could sell it for $40,000 or even more. Pulling money out of his duffel bag with no issue, Siegel offers $60,000 cash and it’s accepted. Hanging out in the backyard, George reminds Siegel he may not have any money left with the way he spends it, but he’s not worried in the slightest because he knows he’ll make more. Though his trip was only supposed to last four more days, he also says he may stay a little longer, which as we know is the understatement of the century. Pivoting, he asks George where he can get a taxi to get to Dragna’s. George offers to drive him, but Siegel insists this is business. Sometime later, Siegel sees a guy getting into his car while in his taxi and compliments him. Apparently, he used straight cash to buy the car off the guy too! In the evening, Siegel drives to Dragna’s place and is stopped at the door by Louie Dragna (Don Calfa) and another door watch guy, though they loosen up once he introduces himself. Following this, Siegel meets with Dragna in his house about a partnership, but Dragna is uninterested. Siegel gives him an ultimatum.

Dragna can take his 64 guys and come work for Siegel, Meyer, and Charlie, and make his operation a lot bigger. He can take Dragna’s 3 betting parlors and turn it into 20, he can own a wire service and not subscribe to one, and they will put up the money for it and take 75%. Though Dragna would only get 25%, Siegel argues it’s three times more than the 100% he gets now. Dragna asks what the other alternative is. Surprisingly, Bugsy gives Dragna his own gun and says to kill him. Surprised and somewhat respecting his craziness, Dragna agrees to work with Siegel and company. When one guy asks Siegel about breaking off their deal with Transcontinental, referring to him as “Bugsy”, this is enough to set him off and he punches the guy before leaving. Louie asks Dragna if they should shoot Siegel, but he says not to because Meyer and Charlie will come after them. They’ll just wait for Siegel to fuck things up himself, so when they do kill him, no one will care.

Through a montage, we see Siegel continue to entrench himself in the Los Angeles lifestyle, getting new woman after new woman, continuously calling Virginia only for her to hang up on him, business starting to boom, Siegel getting his face in the newspaper following his recent successes, and Siegel hanging with George.

At some club, Siegel dances with Dorothy (Neuwirth), the wife of Count di Frasso (Giancarlo Scandiuzzi). Once di Frasso joins in on their conversation, they jokingly discuss getting Siegel the title of “duke” if he ever makes the trip out to Italy. Of course, George tells Siegel privately that one of di Frasso’s best friends is Benito Mussolini, which even pisses off Siegel who gets surprisingly patriotic in the moment before his eyes glance over and see Virginia on the dance floor with some man. As they make eye contact, Siegel is told he has a phone call from Dragna, so he goes to take it. Before he does though, George introduces him to district attorney James McWilde. With him being up for reelection, Siegel asks if he can contribute, so McWilde suggests he contact Donald Mitchell since he handles all the money. Once George excuses himself to go talk to some women, Siegel brings up how there are people who are friends with Mussolini there, but McWilde is asked by a colleague to talk to the senator before he leaves. With this, he tells Siegel to keep him updated on this problem. Going over to pick up the phone, Siegel gives a ring to the waiter and tells him to give it to Virginia. Then, he takes the call from Dragna. Apparently, Mickey Cohen robbed their Franklin Street gambling joint out of $56,000 cash. Despite this bad news, his eyes are fixated on the now agitated Virginia, who stares at him while dancing with guy she’s with after getting the ring. After this, Siegel goes to the gambling joint and wonders how one guy robbed five and got away scot-free with $56,143. Dragna says they’ll kill Cohen without issue, but Siegel doesn’t want him dead. He wants to talk to him. At home, Siegel watches his own screen test on a projector before taking a call from his wife Esta, who wants to know when he’s coming back to Scarsdale. Putting it on her, he asks instead when she and the kids are going to move to Los Angeles instead.

However, he completely changes his tune once he sees Virgina drive up to the side of his house, saying it might be a bad idea to take the kids out of school and to play it by ear for a little bit. Once he hangs up, he asks his housekeeper Ronald to turn off the projector, but he’s nowhere to be found. Virginia comes in and asks what he’s watching, but he says it’s a newsreel that’s just ended. After playful flirting and playing a little hard to get, they end up making out, despite the potential problems that could arise from a relationship between them that they both acknowledge. They have sex and the fun continues in the morning. They are interrupted by a phone call from George, who has found Cohen. Siegel arranges for them to meet a health club later that day. George waits with Siegel by the poolside at the health club, with Seigel reciting his enunciation line while in a robe with cucumbers on his eyes. Cohen shows up late and seems bothered by Siegel’s accusations. Finally, he says he only took $42,000 from Dragna, not $56,000. He gives Cohen until 7PM to give the money back, prompting Cohen to cuss him out and storm off. Siegel laughs it off and tells George to bring him back. At the same time, Seigel tells Dragna he has the Cohen problem under control and to meet him at his house at 7:30PM. Following this, he meets with Cohen and George in a bar, and he tells Cohen he wants him to join his expansion, offering to pay him $5,000 a week. Of course, this is following a rant by Cohen about the women Siegel’s people associates with, even making fun of Virginia and her long list of lovers. Then, Siegel offers $6,000. Cohen counters with $10,000, and Siegel accepts, though he wants the $42,000 he stole by 7:30PM. Cohen accepts and leaves. In the car, Siegel is still bothered about hearing of Virgina’s many lovers, a fact that George even knows about.

Virginia makes dinner for Siegel that night at the house, but Siegel is particularly short with her. Once he starts to make statements implying that he knows about her previous sexual escapades, she starts getting angry. After he basically calls her a whore, she throws an ashtray at him and it hits him in the eyebrow, causing it to bleed. They have an argument, and she tries to storm out. As Siegel stops her before she gets to the door, she flips out. Just then, Cohen knocks on the door. Showing the gash on his face, Siegel answers the door. Cohen gives him the full $42,000 and he accepts it, while downplaying what’s going on inside the house before introducing Cohen to Virginia. He greets her and asks to come in, but Siegel takes a much-needed rain check. Cohen gets in his car to leave just as Dragna shows up, with Cohen yelling at Dragna before driving off. Siegel lets Dragna in and tells Virgina to wait for him. Siegel takes Dragna to his office, gives him all the money Cohen stole, and tells him how he offered Cohen a job running the day-to-day mechanics of his operation. Unfortunately, this was Dragna’s job, so now Dragna has to work for Cohen. Dragna can’t believe it, but Siegel explains that it’s because $14,000 was stolen and it wasn’t Cohen. It was Dragna. He absolutely loses it on Dragna until he finally admits he did it, plays Russian roulette with him, makes him crawl on the ground and bark like a dog and oink like a pig, and attacks him as he does it. Then, he gives Dragna the money to take back to the gambling joint and tells him to give back the rest of the money he stole, sparing him for the time being. Once Dragna leaves, Siegel looks over at a frightened Virginia, who heard everything through the closed doors of his office. He goes back to the dinner table to eat and invites her. Once he starts eating, she can’t help herself and is all over him. They have sex right then and there.

Sometime later, Siegel and Virginia are in a parked car somewhere far, and she questions him hanging out with Dorothy, which he claims is all part of a plan that will get him to close to Mussolini so he can assassinate him. Virgina doesn’t believe him and changes the subject to how he doesn’t want to be seen with her, bringing up how he’s keeping her from Esta. She doesn’t want to be anyone’s secret, and she’s mad that they don’t go anywhere together. Believing in second chances, something he doubles and triples down on throughout the movie almost to a fault, Siegel promises to make good on everything she wants, as he wants to give her the world. Unfortunately, the drama with her doesn’t mix well with the increasing responsibilities he gets as he continues to become a big name in the world of organized crime. Of course, things really start to take heed as Siegel expands into Las Vegas, Nevada with an ahead-of-its-time idea that only unravels because of Siegel himself.

My Thoughts:

Hollywood’s fascination with real-life gangsters and mafiosos are a tale as old as cinema itself. Though we reached the apex of it with The Godfather franchise, the attempts to reach those levels of acclaim have been admirable and have gotten very close to that tier of immortality. In the 1990s specifically, there seemed to be another resurgence of the crime drama with many gangster movies taking their swing at the genre, whether it was an original story or a fictionalized version of real-life personalities. The Oscar-winning Bugsy falls in the latter category but isn’t talked about nearly as much as its peers from the time period, especially in retrospect. Produced and starring Warren Beatty, the superstar actor found a way to finally put together a team to help make his passion project see the light. With director Barry Levinson and screenwriter James Toback, Beatty was able to bring his vision to life and give us the best film depiction of Ben “Bugsy” Siegel that has ever been produced. Admittedly, it may be the only film that is focused on Siegel rather than him playing a supporting role in the main story, but the perfectly cast Beatty makes Ben Siegel the center of attention in Bugsy, and if you know enough about the famed criminal, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Celebrity, gangster, businessman, husband, and killer, Ben Siegel is a very complicated gangster who doesn’t fit into any one category. In Bugsy, we are given insight into every aspect of his life, what makes him tick (and what surprisingly doesn’t), and his general motivations in life. Along with this, insight and attention are given to his professional career, though it’s focus is just as secondary to his character arc as Siegel treated it in real life. Not very long into the film, the viewer will start to notice the issue that Siegel can never seem to overcome in that though his ambitions are admirable and forward-thinking, it never seems to coincide with success because of his own faults. He almost always gets sidetracked with something else that will only deter his progress, which he never sees or refuses to admit he sees. As soon as Siegel does something good in his job, makes a move that pleases his partners or helps make the mafia a lot more money, he turns around and defies them because of his personal interests, unpredictable personality, love of women, and above all else, his unnecessary and completely avoidable expenditures. For instance, did he need to walk straight into Lawrence Tibbet’s house one day, coerce him into selling his house, and buying it for double what Tibbet originally paid and in full cash? Could Siegel have just listened to the experienced architect over the plans for the Flamingo, so he could see the pool from the casino without costing them more millions when he realized his own suggestion was wrong? Truthfully, Siegel could get away with a lot of things if he avoided all the extra money he threw in every direction. His friend in Meyer Lansky knew this from the beginning. In the opening minutes, he tells Charlie that Siegel doesn’t respect money. When George tells Siegel after the house purchase that he needs to calm down, Siegel doesn’t flinch when talking about how he will make more. He never learns and doesn’t care to.

It’s his ultimate undoing, leading Seigel to dig a hole so big for himself by the end, no one would have protested had he just laid down and told everyone to lay the dirt on top of him. Remember people, you have to respect the money you make. Otherwise, the consequences can be unforgiving, as shown in Bugsy. Well, it’s that and how picking the wrong woman can ruin your life, but this Siegel still plays a part in this too because she gives him every chance to leave. He’s the one who’s still vehemently in love. This is not a Casino situation, the real movie about picking the wrong woman.

Many gangsters have enjoyed lengthy and fruitful careers, despite being violent psychopaths. However, when people start losing money, this is when the problems arise. The likable Siegel pisses off the rest of his mafioso brethren because he himself loses hold of the reins that are his priorities. Unfortunately, he never sees it this way, even in the very end. Then again, maybe he chooses not to. It’s hard to tell. He seems relatively intelligent, but again, he gets sidetracked at the same time while he looks into the future. He’s never in the present, another cautionary tale as old as time. Siegel never dwells on failures and presses forward. When his construction of the Flamingo has so many issues and the costs rise to $6 million, it doesn’t take a genius to read the room when Meyer Lansky tries to throw him a lifeline. Siegel is getting his last chance and is asked how he can recoup his end of the money. Though he does seem a little taken aback at the situation, Seigel is cool with selling his possessions, his house if he needs to, and his shares in the hotel itself because he just wants everything to work out for his ultimate goal of making the Flamingo the start of something big in Las Vegas. In Meyer’s eyes, Siegel is eerily close to being a lost cause, but Siegel sees his Flamingo creation as Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel or Shakespeare writing Macbeth. Even when he’s flown back to Los Angeles and it’s almost a foregone conclusion as to what will happen with him after the disastrous opening of the casino, Siegel almost comes to a level of acceptance. Undeterred, his last words to Meyer are to “Never sell your shares in the Flamingo” and how he will be thanking him for it. Ignorant to a fault, Siegel just sees things as meaningless highs and lows and would have kept trucking a long with a whole list of bad decisions had he been kept alive because he’s always looking for the next big thing to attach his name to. He likes the attention. Siegel loved being the man, which is why his attraction to the Hollywood lifestyle was just as intoxicating as being a gangster people feared.

When you combine this with the celebrities he associated with and the screen tests he did, implying he had acting aspirations, it’s no secret Siegel would have continued to push until he became bigger and bigger until no one could tell him “No”. The attention alone drew him the ire of Meyer and Charlie, as this was the main instruction they gave him before he took over from Dragna. Every gangster knows the basic rule of moving in silence and to not draw attention to yourself (“Famous for you is not good”), but Siegel was always thinking like he was an A-List celebrity. The difference in philosophies between Siegel and his two partners was always going to lead to a split. It was inevitable, as Siegel’s face being emblazoned on newspapers weekly only drags them into it as well, especially if the lid gets blown off on their operations. The meeting the bosses have in Cuba was such a great scene to exemplify the discussion surrounding Siegel in regard to the bigger picture in which he is just a pawn, albeit a large one. As a viewer interested in the main character and Beatty’s charismatic performance, you’re torn on their worries and come to appreciate Meyer sticking up for his friend. On the other hand, if you’ve been paying attention to the events of the story and look at it from Charlie and the others’ point of view, they couldn’t keep him alive because he was a detriment to them and himself. Honestly, they were much more patient with him than most mafia members would be. It’s what makes the climax so great, and the overall movie as good as it is. It’s an excellent example on how to craft a three-act structure around a problematic main character who shouldn’t be idolized, an important element many gangster movies tend to forget. They do a good enough job in telling the story to where this is the only logical conclusion regardless of the reality of the situation, and though you love Beatty as the titular character, the movie is done correctly in that you don’t miss him like you would a regular protagonist. The presentation is great, but the audience sees his assassination as a necessary evil that needed to be done, as evidenced by his well-detailed behavior within Levinson’s quality-paced film.

Siegel just pushed and pushed until they couldn’t take it anymore. His self-destructive tendencies were enough to do everyone in, and he didn’t see it as a problem even in his final days. Bugsy shows Siegel trying to balance three different sides to his life to make everyone happy, with his daughter Millicent’s birthday party sequence showing exactly the situation Siegel puts himself in and is still trying to pull off until someone else stops it for him. He’s trying to keep his bosses at bay and brings up his visionary idea for what could become of Las Vegas via the Flamingo, though he freaks out Meyer privately once he talks about his plans to assassinate Mussolini. In real life, Siegel tried to sell weapons to Mussolini, but this is one of those amusing additions to the screenplay that you can’t help but love. It really adds to the constantly distracted mind of Seigel and his mixing up of relevant priorities. Seeing Kingsley deadpan Beatty’s excited reasoning about how plans are on hold until he gets back from Italy and him telling Siegel to stop messing around when he mentions Mussolini was actually hilarious. You can tell Meyer is taken aback from the sheer lunacy of this plan when Beatty almost delivers the lines in a satirical manner saying, “I’m not trying to be funny. Mussolini and Hitler have to be stopped. They’re trying to knock off every Jew on Earth!” and “I can blow him halfway to Siberia!”. The feather in the cap is when Meyer pleads with him to keep this idea a secret and Siegel doubles down with, “That’s right. It’s a secret. Mussolini is a dead man!”. It was so funny, I wouldn’t have minded at this point had they gone fully into the fictionalized biography route and include a scene where Siegel attempts the assassination in Italy but has to back out for whatever reason.

The callback of this when he sees the news of Mussolini’s death in the newspaper and is furious that he wasn’t the one to do it was such a great way to end this elaborate but low-key joke.

Regardless of this wild aside, Siegel is still trying to keep his family happy as evidenced in this birthday party scene, especially knowing how he doesn’t see them often. He’s got his chef’s hat on and is making a cake for his daughter, but he gets interrupted by this impromptu meeting of his bosses and it draws the ire of his wife who is already mad at his current availability to them. At the same time, he fields calls from Mickey Cohen about the whereabouts of Virginia Hill, the woman he’s cheating on his wife with, further showcasing Siegel’s knack for spreading himself too thin because of his own arrogance regarding things he can and should handle compared to what he desires. It’s a complicated scene that would fit nicely in a screwball comedy if certain elements were tuned up a bit, but it works here as an entertaining sequence presenting Siegel at his apex, while foreshadowing his downfall both professionally and personally. Then, there’s the issue of women, Siegel’s other biggest issue. When you look at a lot of gangsters or movie protagonists in general, a beautiful woman or love in general always seems to be the root cause of a lot of problems, and there is no one more blinded by love than Siegel in Bugsy. He already has his wife Esta, he’s seen with a million other women through montages, and his never-ending pursuit of the problematic Virginia Hill encompass most of his time. Karma was bound to hit him hard, and it comes in the form of Virginia. All they do is argue, have serious communication and commitment issues, and have sex. When she’s not in a scene, Siegel is either defending her to anyone who will listen or calling to have someone keep an eye on her because she’s always up to trouble, which usually contradicts his constant defense of her, though he’ll never admit it. Despite how much trouble she brings him in his life, even denying how she stole $2 million from him and put it in a Switzerland bank account, which makes the decision to kill him easier than it already was from his superiors, Siegel never blames her. He continues to give her chances to a fault.

When he’s given the money back by Virginia who feels bad and shows she still loves him, this is enough to vindicate him, and he rips some of the money up and tells her to keep the rest. The money never meant anything to him. It was only a means to an end, which is why he’s so willing to throw money at the glass wall and the header beam, so he can see the pool from the casino. It doesn’t matter how much it costs. He just wants what he wants and doesn’t give a fuck about the logistics. Even when he’s faced with backlash for his overages from his mafia cohorts over the phone, he hangs up and calls them all “a bunch of bloodless bureaucrats”. It’s much like Virginia’s quote to him when she (lazily) tries to convince him not to pursue her as they talk behind the projector, saying they are too similar.

“…We both want whatever we want, whenever we want it, and we both want everything.”

It’s about as toxic a romance as you can get, and Annette Bening is just as intoxicating in her performance as her characterization is written to be. How can Siegel continuously go back to this woman? Does she love him back? Is she only it for the money or is it because she fears him early on in the relationship? Virigina is just as hard to categorize as Siegel is. Maybe this is why they connect in a weird, twisted way. They are too alike, as they are both combustible personalities who don’t have a plan and burn every bridge they come across, only worrying about fixing things later when they see fit. Virginia flip-flops from man to man just as much as Siegel does with women, she’s strong and confident, plays an excellent tease to the head-over-heels gangster, and has many moments where she defies or even goes out of her way to say something to anger the already unpredictable criminal. No one else can do this to him. Either he laughs off others who try to play tough with him like with Cohen, or he turns into a psychopath like with Dragna (“Do you want to fuck me?!”) or Joe Adonis, or when you have the audacity to refer to him as “Bugsy”. However, Virginia has him wrapped around her finger and isn’t scared. When she shows up with another man at Ciro’s and Siegel tries to talk to her, she asks about his divorce that she knows he didn’t get yet and even challenges him when he pulls out a gun on her date. Alternately, she has moments where she’s turned on by Siegel’s treatment of Dragna when he’s screaming in Dragna’s face and making him bark like a dog on all fours. Then, as they seem to grow apart, the construction of the Flamingo brings them closer than before, and she loves the responsibility he gives her. Even when he’s told early on how bad of an idea it is by George to give her the checkbook and confidant Cohen telling him that she’s an issue, Siegel always goes to bat for her.

When she drives off after an argument with Siegel, leaving Siegel and Cohen alone in the desert, he turns to Cohen and says, “Isn’t she magnificent?”. When Joe Adonis calls her a slut and refuses to apologize for it sometime later when Siegel asks him to, he beats the holy hell out of Joe without care of the potential consequences. She has him hooked. When he has a moment in the prison where he threatens to tear down the Flamingo and start from scratch because it’s not going the way he wanted, he only relents when Virginia is able to calm him down. There’s not a single man in his circle that could bring him back down to Earth, not even Cohen, as Siegel threatens to break his jaw when he lets him know about the $2 million Virginia stole. The last conversation the two have is Siegel randomly bringing up Virginia again, defending her with a smile on his face before flying to his impending assassination that she unintentionally has caused.

It’s a romance fit for the gangster lifestyle.

Virginia is alluring like a Hollywood starlet is, and he can’t shake her spell even when she proves him wrong at every turn. That is power only a woman can have, and Bening is great at it. It makes sense why her and Warren Beatty ended up getting married in real-life shortly after the movie. Considering Ben Siegel’s love for Hollywood and women, Beatty was made for this role, and he knew it. There comes a time in every acting legend’s life where they have to play a big-time gangster. It has to happen at least once if you are considered to be among the elite class. When you look at the details of Bugsy, there is no real-life based gangster role more tailor-made for Warren Beatty than Ben Siegel. He was a good-looking guy who cared about his appearance (even fixing his hair in the mirror after beating up Joe Adonis), always dressed to perfection, chased every beautiful woman imaginable and was very successful at it, he liked hobnobbing with the Hollywood elite, and he had a year-round tan. In a way, Bugsy is a dramatized version of Beatty’s life only with a mafia subplot added to it. Beatty does an incredible job as the famous gangster, a year after playing the titular character in Dick Tracy no less. With his always present charm and likability present, Beatty draws you in with his movie star aura. Once he hooks the audience in with that smile and friendly approach, he shocks the system of the viewer with a twist of villainy, reminding the viewer that Ben Siegel is very much a bad person and a killer at that. In an instant, he can go from being the most generous person you may ever meet, throwing money around like there’s no tomorrow, but also flip a switch to become an unhinged maniac that turns to violence as he sees fit. It’s like when he beat up Chick thinking that Virginia was cheating on him, but since it was her brother, he apologizes by offering to buy him a new red Cadillac.

Without question, it’s one of Beatty’s most dynamic performances.

Bugsy was facing stiff competition at the Oscars this year, but I’m glad the Academy did recognize them in Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, two awards that are almost a given for period pieces done right. Beatty and Levinson do a great job at recreating the landscape of 1940s Los Angeles and early Las Vegas with a careful approach and stylistic cinematography to boot, bringing out the best of Beverly Hills and the desert landscapes that would eventually become a billion-dollar industry that Siegel was never able to see through. Sure, there are period pieces that have done it better, but they still did a very good job in entrenching us in the timeframe that Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Charlie Luciano, and dozens of other mobsters controlled for years. The supporting cast was excellent. Joe Mantegna was very good as George Raft, and Elliot Gould’s small role as the possibly slow, compulsive gambler and all-around dispshit Harry Greenberg added a great touch to the entertainment factor. The bonus of him not trying to tell jokes but being genuinely funny because of his aloofness was a great touch. It really added to his characterization of being this sad moron that Siegel pities and gives extra chances to until he can’t anymore. He’s only in a handful of scenes, but Gould’s delivery makes him memorable enough to be a huge takeaway from the overall picture. The same can be said of Bebe Neuwirth. Her role as Dorothy di Grasso was done so well in the limited screentime she had that she would have earned more screentime in any other production had this been more of an ensemble rather than a biopic. Even with all of this, you still have two heavyweights in Ben Kingsley and Harvey Keitel rounding out the cast. Bugsy hits on so many different levels. In a weaker year, they could have done a lot more damage around awards season. The only thing they weren’t winning was Best Makeup, as the piss-poor job they did in trying to make Keitel look like he had a receding hairline was comically bad.

On a side note, I loved the sequences involving Siegel’s stay in prison and how he was treated like a king, with him being more agitated by the look of his tan in his newspaper picture rather than the fact that he’s being implicated in a homicide. Additionally, the bullet hole through the projector in the climax was a striking visual and a great final, might I say, cinematic touch.

Bugsy is only forgotten in the grand scheme of things because there are so many great films in the genre. With this being said, it’s still one of the best gangster features of the 90s. Led by a captivating performance by star Warren Beatty, Bugsy is a great biographical crime drama and tragic romance that hits from enough angles to entertain everyone. There are other mafia films that are more accurate or better overall, but Bugsy does everything so well that it deserves to be in the conversation alongside them.

Fun Fact: Originally, Jean-Luc Godard considered an attempt to make a movie based on Bugsy Siegel entitled The Story, and he envisioned Robert De Niro as Bugsy and Diane Keaton as Virgina Hill, though this would never materialize.