Nothing new in prejudicial mob film ‘The Family’
September 16, 2013 9:30AM
This film publicity image released by Relativity Media shows Robert DeNiro in "The Family." (AP Photo/Relativity Media, Jessica Forde)
Richard Roeper needs a thesaurus. In his review of Robert De Niro in “The Family,” Roeper describes the film as “different.”
Really?
De Niro plays the same type of mob character he played in “Analyze This” and “Analyze That.”
Michelle Pfeiffer plays the same mob wife she played in “Married to the Mob” in 1988.
Vincent Pastore and Dominic Chianese play the same dumb thugs they played in “The Sopranos.”
The fact that Hollywood released this film right now is particularly offensive, for two reasons:
1) A month ago, Boston mob boss James “Whitey” Bulger was convicted of crimes against humanity; he was not Italian; and 2) Bill De Blasio just won the Democratic primary in New York and is poised to become New York’s next mayor. De Blasio’s original surname is Wilhelm; he changed it to DeBlasio to honor the Italian mother and Italian grandparents who raised him.
“The Family” is prejudice masquerading as entertainment. An ordinary dictionary has a simple word for it: garbage.
Bill Dal Cerro, Chicago Office, Italic Institute of America
I have as little patience for those who say President Obama is sending mixed signals on Syria as I do for those who are doing victory laps and think securing and destroying that nation’s biological weapons will be easy. Who will take control of the weapons? Who will protect those who take control of the weapons from rebel, national and other hostile forces? Where will the weapons be taken to be destroyed? Who will do the actual work, how many troops will there be, and who will oversee them? Will there be weapons still hidden away after the public operation is over?
Solving these problems will take hard work and cooperation of all powers involved. Ideally this “good will and trust” can carry over to solving the other mammoth problems in the Middle East. We don’t want to be back at the same dangerous place in a short time. The cynic in me says this is not going to happen, but my optimistic self still has hope.
Karen Wagner, Rolling Meadows
