Stuart Rosenberg directs Mickey Rourke, Eric Roberts and Daryl Hannah in this crime drama about two low rent NY criminals trying to survive an incompetent mid-level score.

Mean Streets remade as a coded camp cabaret show. So histrionic, so closeted flaming gay, so easily distracted with side-plot scrapes that this really should be awful. It isn’t – it often is fantastic in just how hard everyone is trying to be authentic, to be the next Brando or Pacino. Sure, most of it is men shouting poetic street slang at each other in suits (baggy) and leisurewear (tight) when really they should be unbuttoning each other’s flies. Just fuck already. It makes it all the more fun, the heist and mob drama are a mere nail in the wall to hang it all off of. Probably Rourke’s best youthful turn and easily Roberts most…. err… distinctive.

8