this dusty and low key and low budget gangster film manages to hold the attention for the most part despite be very derivative and rather dull . for a character piece it fatally flaw . the acting be strictly from the shout and then repeat with added f word school of italian american gangster performance and very quickly get tiresome . in fact it appear that much of it have be improvise and with director abel ferrara seemingly content that if the actor shout enough and get suitably red face and spittly and and repeat the same question enough time they will qualify a intense . they do not . chris penn be the bad offender and turning in an awful performance that want to be harvey keitel in bad lieutenant but emerge more like christopher lloyd in who frame roger rabbit . christopher walken play himself but even that seem to disinterest him unless he be give the chance to indulge in some painful i be an ac tor . moment best demonstrate in the scene where he cry and shout at his brother corpse and it leave to gretchen mol and isabella rossellini to deliver the only decent performance . consider the budget the period feel be quite good and there some occasional gratuitous violence to keep thing interest and and the generally depressing mood of the whole piece be quite effective and but those be small compensation for have to sit through all that repetitive shout and those horribly self indulgent performance .