The grubby sub-Scorsese mob movie “Kill the Irishman” at least succeeds in making Cleveland look interesting.
Set in 1960s and ’70s Ohio, this unattractively filmed biopic is about a real-life figure, Danny Greene, a mobbed-up Irish-American union boss whose request for a Cosa Nostra loan leads to a series of disagreements that play out with enough stabbings, beatdowns and explosions to fill up a grindhouse double-feature.
Welcome supporting turns by the likes of Christopher Walken and Paul Sorvino help make the movie watchable, as does the nasty barrage of ethnic insults deployed by the warring Irish and Italian clans.
But in the lead role, the snarling Ray Stevenson suffers from a charisma deficit. As his Yosemite Sam-style character walks away from the bombings of both his car and his house, he lacks the sense of absurdity that might have made the movie work. Also, the increasingly potato-y Val Kilmer is irrelevant as a detective commenting on the action.
If you’re in the mood for a clichéd gangland B-movie, though, you could do worse.