Billy Bathgate (1991)

Directed by Robert Benton. Starring Loren Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman, Steven Hill, Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, John Costelloe, Billy Jaye, Stanley Tucci, Timothy Jerome, Moira Kelly, Mike Starr. [R]

Hoffman’s and Kidman’s names may be on the marquee, but the titular character of this period gangster yarn is a wide-eyed young man (Dean) from Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx, taken under the wing of fading real-life mobster Dutch Schultz (Hoffman). Too bad li’l Billy is a bland, passive figure who wears the same mildly-concerned, mildly-befuddled expression throughout, regardless of whether he’s stumbling through an insipid romance with Kidman or he’s just witnessed Schultz shoot a man in the mouth. The rest of the cast is a bit more colorful (histrionic Hoffman especially), but the actors rarely seem to have a grasp on their underwritten roles; only Hill creates something worth remembering, weary and cautious, the smartest and saddest man in whichever room he enters. Unfocused, highly-dramatized adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s novel by Tom Stoppard. Director Benton fails to paint a particularly seductive life of crime with which the protagonist can get swept up in; suspense scenes are also underwhelming. Sets and costumes look good, especially when crisply shot by director of photography Néstor Almendros, but they’re not big or showy enough to explain the film’s huge cost.

44/100