The Littlest Caesar

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

CRAZY JOE

Directed by CARLO LIZZANI Screenplay by LEWIS JOHN CARLINO

Joey Gallo's career must have been a disappointment to him. Despite the most strenuous criminal efforts, he never did find a place above the salt at the Mafia's endless family banquet. His alternate gambit, as a kind of self-taught existential hero on Manhattan's celebrity circuit, did not amount to much either. And of course he ended up dead of assorted, uncredited gunshot wounds in a clam bar in Little Italy a couple of years back.

But if his life was not a model of underworld career management, it was a commercial moviemaker's dream. To begin with, his passion for upward mobility inevitably brings up the tragic gangster heroes of cinema history --those overreaching Little Caesars whose dreams of success were so satisfyingly animated by the likes of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney.

So there is a nice element of nostalgia for the bad old guys in Crazy Joe. In addition, he was nothing if not a veteran Mafia soldier, so there is ample opportunity to poke around glumly tasteless mansions inhabited by sundry god-fatherly types. And there they are, nibbling-- their ethnic viands as they order up colorful executions of errant associates. Such sequences should satisfy Cosa Nostra buffs, who seem to form a significant portion of the movie audience today. Finally, as every tabloid reader must remember, Crazy Joe contracted toward the end a loose alliance with black mobsters -- also outsiders as far as the Mafia leadership was concerned -- who are sufficiently cheeky toward the white establishment of their chosen profession to please blaxploitation fans.

In short, there is a little something for everybody in Crazy Joe -- except those who insist on at least routine cinematic competence even in gangster movies. With Peter Boyle in the title role, and Rip Torn, Eli Wallach, Charlie Cioffi and Luther Adler as supporting hoods, there is a fair amount of acting ability on hand, but each man seems to be working in a minimovie all his own. Director Lizzani is unable to find in Carlino's ripped-off script a solid tempo from which the actors might take a common beat. As a result, Crazy Joe never lives up to its title, never penetrates the seemingly lunatic ambition of its subject. It is just a random collection of secondhand sensations dimly perceived.

Richard Schickel

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