In the movies, it always amazes me that people running a sophisticated and successful business scam, always decide to "go over the top" just when an outsider has come on the scene. If the thugs employed by the Phoenix character to make sure Caan's company got the lion's share of city contracts operated as crudely as they do in the scene where Walberg's character beats a cop half to death, they would have been busted the first or second time out. And why does Caan's Frank give in so easily to letting Leo join Willie's crew when so much is at stake? Besides the usual lack of logic, the film commits the ultimate sin of being just plain boring. As someone else wrote, too many characters with no reason given to care about any of them. Nice to see some good actors getting a paycheck, but this film is a waste of time for everyone. And, every time I saw the crooked politician, I kept thinking, "why did they give Steve Lawrence that part, and when is he going to break into a Broadway show tune?"
