Kill the Irishman

What makes this film special and memorable is the character of Danny Green, who is not the usual neighborhood hoodlum you see in movies. more

The cast is tasty, including Vincent D'Onofrio as a friendly fellow Mob guy, Val Kilmer as the head of the Cleveland PD, Christopher Walken as an underworld power broker, and a bunch of character actors hoping for a remake of "The Sopranos." more

Overall, Kill the Irishman is an entertaining look at a brutal time in an ugly place. more

Call it "On the Lakefront." Or "Pretty-Good Fellas." more

The best thing about the picture (unless you like exploding cars, in which case the rest of the movie is just so many interruptions between getting to see all these big old '70s boats going boom) is its proudly hammy supporting cast. more

Jonathan Hensleigh's film won't displace "Goodfellas" in anyone's hierarchy of wise-guy movies. more

Stevenson is big and swarthy and not altogether without credibility, but he's got as much charisma as a potato. more

It's just another gangster movie for the pile. more

A big, bloated, though frequently engaging gangster movie, Kill the Irishman should properly be viewed late night on TV, flipping back and forth between the film, David Letterman and a west-coast ball game. more

If you're in the mood for a clichéd gangland B-movie, though, you could do worse. more

A tough Irishman challenges the authority of the Italian mobsters in Cleveland, thus making himself a target. A contract is put out on him, but he is difficult to take down. This is an effective gangster film that is quite violent, but the violence is not visually graphic. The action is intercut with actual news footage of the local media covering the events as they took place, which adds to the film's realism. The lead character is a domineering figure, but he is not a bully, and he is thus likeable. Some familiar faces from gangster films past appear in this one, bringing back memories... more

The biographical dramatization "Kill The Irishman" is one of those under the radar films that, I believe, people will discover and embrace through the DVD market. Certainly not a perfect film--the movie does boast, however, a raw grittiness, larger than life performances, and an intriguing and spectacular true story begging for a big screen treatment. And yet, the theatrical release was all but non-existent. The film chronicles a mob war that escalated in Cleveland during the mid-seventies. At the heart of the action is Danny Greene, played with vigor by Ray Stevenson, an Irish-American... more

It's very seldom that I say that a particular movie would have benefited from a longer running time, but in the case of KILL THE IRISHMAN, I think that an additional thirty minutes would have turned what is now an entertaining gangster movie into a classic of the genre. Written (with Jeremy Walters) and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, KILL THE IRISHMAN is based on the true story of Danny Greene, an Irish-American thug, revered by his neighbors as a local "Robin Hood," who in the 1970s, declared war on the Cleveland branch of the Italian Mafia. Greene survived many assassination attempts... more