An unremittingly dark gangster movie where even the blood is black and humour is permitted not so much as a flicker. The problem with Abel Ferrara's unsmiling film, which is about as friendly as the end of a gun barrel, is that it hasn't the structure to justify the grandiose Hamlet-like tableau of its conclusion. A Little Italy gangster of the Thirties is shot dead. His brother vows vengeance. The rest is about loaded conversations, bullying macho men, easy women, waiting wives, sweat and cordite, before everything ends in a blast of gunfire. Although it does achieve a dark, stifling feeling of danger and imminent death, the film moves sluggishly and frankly you'd have more fun at a real funeral. Christopher Walken, as the older brother, gives his standard death's-head performance.

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