Could have been a good film if...

First of all, for a film portraying the mob in NYC in the mid to late 60's, they had the least authentic cast I have ever seen. Starting with Kirk Douglas, who is as believeable as an Italian NY mob guy as Pat Boone, and he then tries to make up for it with his over the top hamminess. And I am usually a fan of Douglas, but I just never bought into his character and his histrionics. The rest of the cast also lacked in Italian or NY character types, and instead resembled a crew of white waspy guys who ran off to play squash between takes, with rare exceptions such as Val Avery and one or two others. There were other NY mob related movies around ths time that captured the grittiness of NYC, and had much more authentic characters playing the parts. I think if this story was done with the right actors, it would have been received much better, but as it stands, it was a huge disappointment.