Mikey and Nicky

Part of the JBFC’s Tribute to Elaine May

“Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky is the great gangster movie of the 1970s, a welcome corrective to The Godfather”(Richard Brody, The New Yorker).

Set over a long, tense night in Philadelphia’s seedier neighborhoods, this is the story of small-time thug Nicky (played with determined and fragile ferocity by John Cassavetes) holing up in a fleabag hotel, convinced that he’s next on his boss’s hit list. Desperate and unhinged, he reaches out to his childhood friend and fellow gangster, Mikey (a cunningly nervous Peter Falk). Mikey turns up to ostensibly help Nicky sneak out of town, but is he doing right by his old friend? This is a stirring and unequivocal portrait of small time Jewish mobsters in Philadelphia in the mid-1970s, rarely, if ever, seen before on the screen. Elaine May at her finest.

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