MovieChat Forums > State of Grace (1990) Discussion > Worst Mob Boss of any Mob Movie

Worst Mob Boss of any Mob Movie


What a pathetic Boss (Ed Harris). He goes after senior citizens for $900 in booze money (brings 7 guys to the bar with him). When he can't control his own guys and they get in a fight he goes on to lecture them on the importance of "intimidating" the people they rip off like the rant some young parent might make.

He bows down to the Italians and takes all of their orders like a servant. He kills off his own guys (over an 8K debt) and his own brother...and he is probably one of the worst shots out of all his guys (wastes a whole clip at the end without hitting anything). Amazingly enough..I think I could run his crew better.

The one who should have been running the crew was Oldman...you gotta be loyal and a little crazy (OK, alot!).

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not too many to pick from, only one i can think of would be giovanni ribisi in 10th & wolf. because he would just drink at a strip club all day and didnt want to bury old grudges with the italians to make money. i think a better topic would be who was the best mob boss of any mob movie. hands down imo would be marlon brandon in gf1. pacino was smart in the sequels but not as smart as don vito.

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Randy Quaid in the Ice Storm was awful!! So was Nicolas Cage in Kiss of Death.

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Exactly, Ed Harris's character was in no way supposed to be a good mob boss. He was pretty much a *beep* up. It shows when Sean Penn asks him, "you think yor smart", and hands then hands him his badge.

"Every gun makes its own tune"-The Good,The Bad,and The Ugly

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[deleted]


That would've been an excellent twist. Really if I hadn't read the sypnopsis, or back of my dvd, I might not have thought he was a cop.
"Every gun makes its own tune"-The Good,The Bad,and The Ugly

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Interesting, because that wouldn't take too much editing effort. Just remove the meeting between Penn and Turturro in the beginning for the gun exchange (or add it as a twist reinforcing flashback). Same goes for other Turturro encounters (the funeral, the subway, the phonecall, the aftermath at Pier 84. Finally push forward the confession to the Katie character, or remove it.

I just realized that Penn's murderous rampage might strike very odd, because you loose the whole internal conflict dialogues with Turturro. On second thought, making it a twist is not a good idea; it negates all the interesting bits of the Penn character and changes the whole theme of the movie.

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Randy Quaid wasn't in The Ice Storm!

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Great thread!

Your points are very good and make me laugh. Killing someone in your own crew over 8 grand. One would assume that for a gangster you could produce that in a day.

What I found exceptional was how extremely stupid Jackie was not to be able to sence that he would get whacked. First he starts a fight with the italians, then he makes things worse by killing 3 of them. The boss is totally pissed and goes to a chrisis meeting to avoid war, then when he comes back he acts totally weird. That the killing was no big deal, he hugs him for the first time in years, and asks him to go to a lonely place for a weird favor, and going yourself and not telling anyone about it.

He might as well have asked him to go out into the woods in the middle of the night, dig a hole, write his will before that, and wait for further instructions.

Well I guess the brotherly love made him blind, but still....

I think the only 2 people you see the boss whack are members of his own crew :)

I had never reflected over how dumb this movie really was until you said it. I'm confused because at the same time I think it's highly entetaining and very "good". I just love gary oldman in this, what a great performance. I thought this reminded me a LOT about "the departed". Great performances all around.




well since you're naked you might as well f___ a friend of mine. Paul come in here!

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Right. Quaid wasn't in The Ice Storm. He was in The Ice Harvest.

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I think he meant The Ice Harvest.

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Alot of people will probably call me an *beep* for this, but my alltime worst boss will always be Tony Montana (scarface). A doped up over violent paranoid loser. In my books it doesn't matter how many you take down in a shootout if it ends up with you being dead anyway.

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DUDE I agree and I've been eating crow for it my whole life! He's terrible.

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Sonny Corleone was pretty awful too.

Even Vito said so later.

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He is supposed to be terrible - it's a dysfunctional crew that implodes. Read the book "The Westies" about the Hells Kitchen irish mob - this film is based on that.

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This is the correct answer.

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i hear westies were feared by italian mob.

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its a MOVIE not true about true events.jimmy coodan(not sure of last name
spelled)was the leader of the westies and one of the most voilent gangters
of all time.he liked to chop his victims up.and he WOULD kill someone
for 900 dollars.as it says loosly based on the westies.he did not have
a brother nor gave up any of his guys that he didn't want to for his own
reasons.he became very close to a crew of one of the new york families and
wanted to joined with them.but because of this his own irish gangsters did
not like it.and that brought down the gang.so your not watching the real
leader of the westies nor real story.its just a movie.but well done.

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I just watched this flick tonight. Yes, the three of us watching agreed that Ed Harris was basically the worst mob boss ever. I think it was the fault of bad writing.....I can't think of a worse written movie at the moment.

This flick was filled with stereotypical characters that just swore a lot and drank waaaaay too much.

Really bad movie.

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I am one of the few that'll agree with you, probably.

And yeah, what's with the bad shooting at the end? I mean, christ, Noonan's on the floor with a few wounds, and Frankie comes right out in the open, even after all his men have been toasted, and can't shoot straight. The smart move would've been to shield yourself in the doorway, and try picking Noonan off from there.

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I like Ed Harris. I don't think that the problem here is his acting. Unless he wasn't given any lines and was told to improvise, then it's not him.

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I can't think of a better written movie, especially knowing the source material it's based on. The characters are stereotypical because that's what they were really like. That's how stereotypes start.

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Great writing?

Have a cop go back to the old neighborhood, commit crimes with old friends, and try to nail the brother who's the boss, but not the other one, while re-kindling a romance with with the crime lord's sister, while the brothers commit a few murders, and also taking part in a potential gang war with the Mafia.

Brilliant.


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Well the way you dead-pan it, yeah, it's gonna sound boring. It's about the internal struggle that he's having about having to bust his friends. And he would've had to bust Jackie too, but he got killed... hence the struggle. You must've been watching this while doing something else like washing dishes, because if THAT'S all you got from this movie then you weren't paying attention.

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Maybe I was too drunk at the time (I was trying to match Jackie).

I thought that Terry said something to Kate about going after Frank, and hoping to leave Jack out of it. If I'm dreaming, then it's worse than I'd thought, since he appeared to be very close to Jack - and it'd be really stupid if he'd intended to go after an old friend like that.

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That's the whole point of the movie! He hated that he was--in his words "a Judas cop" working undercover to bust his friends and getting in too deep with all of the drinking and hanging out with Jackie.

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Yeah, I get the point. I just didn't find it believable, realistic, entertaining, or interesting.

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No accounting for taste.

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I found it entertaining and interesting but believable.... hmmmmmm. The most unrealistic thing of all is (as someone pointed before) Frankie taking orders of the italian mob as a complete servant, being humiliated for this annoying mob-boss who didn't allowed him for making not even a stupid phone call, and killing his brother without hesitation just b/c he was ordered to do it. I HATED when Frankie killed Jackie and Noonan couldn't do anything. I yelled.
But the film was very watchable for me because of remarkable acting of Gary Oldman who totally stole the whole thing.

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The part that you consider unrealistic pretty much actually happened in real life. Frankie is clearly LOOSELY based on Jimmy Coonan, who ran the Westies, and he had a similar relationship with the Italians. At that time--if you wanted to stay in organized crime--you had to be subservient to the Mafia.

Don't steal. The government hates the competition.

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[deleted]

Coonan and according to neighborhood gossip.....could be right but...............I believe zip of what I read and hear and I am not Chinese...Irish catholic I am and proud!

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I think you might find that was the whole point...by the way, is your real name Robert McKee?

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I agree, but it was mostly the writing. This is one of Sean Penn's worst movies and even worst acting performance. BAD MOVIE

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In response to a post from years ago, Randy Quaid was a mobster in the excellent and criminally underappreciated "The Ice Harvest," not the "Ice Storm."

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