Solid, definitely not trash. Good acting from the solid cast members(Shannon, Pratt, Liotta) but the mis-casted actors were AWFUL. It definitely hindered the film. The Cinematography is strong, solid directing, it just came up short a few too many times... Still not trash, that's an overreaction.
shareOne of the problems with Kuklinski's story is that there is no closure. His story appears to have no purpose, therefore a movie about him is pretty pointless.
The acting was ok. The soundtrack was nothing to write home about. The length of the film was probably too short. The character development was not there. In Kuklinski's story, there is a whole backstory about him that led up to him becoming what he was. The movie omitted 99% of it. The movie included how his brother was also a murderer, but it omitted how his father was hyper violent and actually killed his other brother Florian. The movie omitted an event that supposedly took place, where Kuklinski's father jumped barefoot out of a 2 storey window to go fight someone. The movie omitted the violence Kuklinski suffered from his own mother when he was younger. The movie omitted the bullying Kuklinski endured when younger, and how his first murder victim was actually one of his bullies. Kuklinski said after that first killing it was easier for him after that. Very important point. Really, Kuklinski was bullied by everyone around him except for his brothers. His mother bullied him, his father bullied him, and strangers bullied him, all of this being physical bullying and attacks. The movie did mention Kuklinski's killing and torturing animals when younger, which is the symptom of a budding serial killer, but it didn't mention that he was dyslexic, which is a visual disorder that can impede the learning process. A learning disorder gave Kuklinski yet another excuse to get involved with crime to make a living. The movie also missed that Kuklinski only became more peaceful once in prison because he was probably being mentally medicated. The movie missed all of it.
There was just so much that this movie missed out on in terms of character development. Yet, they spent almost 10 million to make a movie with very little special effects and couldn't make the backstory fuller and more interesting, if you can even call this sort of thing interesting.
The movie also short changed the Gemini story. David Schwimmer was cast right. He looked a great deal like "Chris Demeo", a cowardly looking killer. But they didn't show how bad Chris really was in this movie. Chris wasn't so much a gunman. He killed with knives. This movie also missed the Gemini method Roy Demeo and his crew used to dispatch victims. Therefore we don't get the full sense of the threat that Roy Demeo was to a cold blooded killer like Kuklinski. The worst villain in this movie should have been Roy Demeo. His crimes appear to have been the most heinous. But we don't see that from Ray Liotta. Ray Liotta's character holds power over Kuklinski in this movie, but we don't actually see that Roy was the worse killer.
Liotta miss cast just because he was in Goidfellows where he was also miss cast ruined the whole film for me after reading the real story of this guy .
Such a shame it could have been a monster success but it fails because of its frail story line and bad casting ,the lead though was played to great effect but would have been much better if the story had been following the real events instead of just glossing over most to try and make a saleable film .
A big dissapiontment .