Making a film set in the 70s takes some finesse. Not only do you need to the right style and wardrobe for your cast, but you have to make sure the dialogue is spot on and the locations and sets are as accurate as possible. Ryan Combs’ Mafia attempts to capture the gangster spirit of the 70s but fails miserably with this messy, poorly acted film that contributes nothing to the genre.
Ruthless crime boss Renzo Wes (Ving Rhames) rules the underworld. But when he crosses a cynical, jaded cop bent on revenge (Pam Grier) she becomes obsessed with bringing him down and is willing to break the law to do it. Her partner (Robert Patrick) is a clean cop who wants to do the right thing, but when his personal life intersects with Renzo’s, loyalties are tested. The three of them are on a collision course with destiny-and one one will emerge unscathed.
I want to know why of all direct to DVD movies to take part in, why, oh why did Ving Rhames decide to take a role and act as an executive producer on the film? I’m almost convinced that this was a favor because if I was Rhames’ agent I couldn’t honestly tell him that signing onto this movie was a good idea, I’d be afraid of what he would do to me after the film came out and it inevitable bombed.
The hilarious part of the film is that the synopsis makes it seem like the cops are going to be an important part of the story, that we’ll see Detective Dupree slowly digress into dirty cop territory but in fact that transition is instantaneous. What’s funny about that is she only has about ten minutes worth of screen time, max. Her partner has a little bit more screen time since his personal life intersects with Renzo’s but, for the most part, the cops are almost irrelevant to the story which is surprising. Instead, Mafia is really about the rise and fall of a greedy and power hungry gangster hell bent on controlling all the turf in the city while one cop tries to marry Renzo’s sister and the other tries to frame him for his crimes as a result of having her partner killed (though to be fair her partner deserved to die, I’ve never seen an undercover cop act so stupidly before in a film).
There is one cool aspect I have to give Combs credit for. One of Renzo’s soldiers, nicknamed Double Double, carries two sawed off, double barreled shotguns who he kills people with. It looks absolutely ludicrous but, in a gangster movie, it’s pretty badass. I also want to thank him for hiring hot girls to play the strippers (even if they couldn’t dance) so that we at least had some eye candy while we listened to people talk and act horribly around each other. Those are about the only things I can comment positively on.
Mafia is a movie that isn’t even worth watching on Netflix. From the attempt at racial commentary and the token white guy turning good, to the jaded cop that would risk killing her partner for the sake of capturing a criminal, Combs’ film isn’t something I’d call entertainment but it is a great lesson in how not to make a gangster movie. All I can say is Ving, you’re better than this.
Movie Rating: Just plain awful, but at least the strippers were good looking (2/10)
DVD rating: It comes with a trailer (0.5/10)
Mafia is now available on DVD from Ketchup Entertainment
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