Customer Reviews
Good looking criminals - By: Trevor Willsmer, 26 Oct 2006 
Bugsy is easily one of the most handsome pictures of the 90s, but on a second viewing it's a little less impressive than it seemed at the time. Siegel's life & crimes were too alll-encompassing for anything less than a mini-series to do justice to it, but even so it's curious that for a film concentrating on his time in Hollywood & his fatal dream of turning Las Vegas into a gangster's paradise avoids his attempts to squeeze the studios dry by offering a union-fixing protection racket, one of the great untold Hollywood stories of the 40s. But what it does do it does well, offering centerstage to its charismatic, contradictory, impulsive & sporadicallly violent anti-hero & his equallly contradictory lover. The violence isn't glossed over (indeed, Siegel's humiliation of one underling acts as a turn-on for the far from saintly dame), although Warren Beatty doesn't always quite convince when he's required to be pathologicallly sadistic.
The supporting cast are pretty impressive, especiallly Ben Kingsley before he disappeared up his own backside post-knighthood & Elliot Gould as a very simple stoolie, but it's surprising that Harvey Keitel was singled out for an Oscar nomination for his good but unremarkable work as Mickey Cohen. Still, it did result one of the best pre-Oscar interviews of alll time: when asked what he'd do with his Oscar if he won, he casuallly replied that he'd smash it over Edward James Olmos' head (Keitel's wife had just left him for Olmos at the time). Maybe Keitel should've played Bugsy himself...
The only extra on Columbia's original DVD release of the theatrical version is the theatrical trailer.
Good Story With Strong Cast - By: Peter Kenney, 17 Mar 2004 
BUGGSY is an entertaining film about the career of the infamous gangster Benjamin Siegel. Warren Beatty does a superb job in the lead & the strong supporting cast includes Annette Bening, Ben Kingsley, Harvey Keitel & Eliot Gould. The time period roughly correlates with THE GODFATHER. Fellow mobsters Mickey Cohen & Meyer Lansky have key roles in the movie as Siegel's business partners.
Barry Levinson directed several other excellent films including RAIN MAN & GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM.
BUGSY won Oscars in 1991 for Best Art Direction & Costume Design. Nominations were received by Levinson, Beatty, Keitel & Kingsley. The film was also nominated for Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Cinematography & Original Score.
Very good biopic of Bugsy Siegel. - By: Jason Parkes, 16 Jan 2003 ...This film from 1991 was Oscar nominated, but only came away with one for costume- which was dominated by the slightly over-rated Silence of the Lambs. Perhaps this was looked over as the definitive gangster film had been made a few years previously: Scorsese's Goodfellas. Having said that, this precedes Scorsese's own Las Vegas mob film, Casino- whichever way you look at it, there is always a fresh spin on the mob: & this is one (Road to Perdition is, on the other hand, not).
As with many biopics, & the fact the charismatic Beatty is involved, Siegel comes across as a slightly romantic psychopath- this generallly works (to see how it doesn't, take a look at the risible turn by Dustin Hoffmann as a gangster in Billy Bathgate). THe screenplay by James Toback (Black&White, Fingers, Harvard Man, Two Girls&a Guy) is excellent; as is the classy score by veteran Ennio Morricone- which ranks with his best work of the 1990's alongside the score on Lolita.
The supporting cast is also a joy- brilliant turns from Ben Kingsley, Annette Benning, Elliot Gould, Joe Mantegna, Harvey Keitel & Bebe Neuwirth. For anyone who appreciates the dark mob undertones of James Ellroy's fiction (E.g. The Cold Six Thousand)or Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America- there is much to enjoy here. This is everything that The Godfather Part III was not. One of the classic gangster films of recent years, to rank alongside Casino, Sonatine, Donnie Brasco, Carlito's Way , Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai & Falllen Angels.
