The always distinctive Raymond De Felitta (“City Island’’) offers a hilarious mob comedy with virtually no violence, though it’s based on a tabloid-ready true story that did not end at all happily.
Tommy Uva (Michael Pitt) and his girlfriend Rosie (delightful Nina Arianda) are working for a collection agency in 1991 when Tommy — obsessed with the Mafia, which he blames for his father’s death — attends mob boss John Gotti’s trial, where he learns that the rules at Mafia social clubs prohibit firearms.
Correctly figuring they’d never report a crime, Uva starts holding up astonished made men with an Uzi, and for good measure humiliates them by making them strip to their underwear at gunpoint.
This attracts the notice of the vengeance-seeking head of a crime family (Andy Garcia) who runs the clubs, as well as feds surveilling the club who find a lucky break — and a fascinated columnist (Ray Romano as a thinly disguised version of real-life reporter Jerry Capeci) for a newspaper that looks an awful lot like The Post.
“Rob the Mob,’’ which is more fun and more tightly constructed than “American Hustle,’’ romanticizes the clueless couple, whom the columnist dubs “Bonnie and Clyde,” and moves their inevitable Christmas Eve date with fate from Ozone Park to a far more attractive location.