This dollar-store version of a Scorsese crime saga, “For the Love of Money” is consistently as trite as its title.
We begin in Israel in 1973, amid the extended clan of a teen dreamer named Izek who has a “Mean Streets” life dealing with hoodlums (including one character who seems modeled after everybody Joe Pesci ever played) at his family’s bar. Moving on to Los Angeles in 1980, Izek (Yuda Levi) runs a chain of successful restaurants, gets into the auto-body business and runs afoul of a local gangster (James Caan).
Caan, and the shootings he brings to the party, at least livens things up, but the incessant clichés about pursuing the American dream and protecting your family make every conversation painful. Moreover, filling your soundtrack with decades’ worth of rock hits (including a shootout that is choreographed to Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”) and clothing everyone in changing fashions to reflect the times do not an epic make.