Well Deserved Praise

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Low level mafia connected guy from New Jersey wanders back into town and asks to be set up with some work. The guy he asks the favor of is reluctant because he doesn't like his ethic of making a lot of money and then disappearing until he needs more. Eventually coming around our hero gets work and hooks up with another mob guy played by Joe Pesci. Unfortunately our hero's temper and lack of good judgment gets him some enemies and it soon becomes clear that he's his own worst enemy. Good mob movie was apparently a one shot deal from its director who died in the early 80's. It's a shame because the film has a nice sense of place lacking from most big budget films. It's the sort of thing you stumble on when channels surfing on a rainy weekend. If there is anything wrong with the film it's with our hero who is a nice guy, but clearly has a death wish since he is constantly doing things that tick people off starting with beating up a mafia don's nephew for the hell of it. Watching the film you can see he's doomed from the start and it's all his own doing so the film becomes a vigil waiting for the other shoe to drop. This doesn't mean the film is bad, its not, its just that it could have been better. (Perhaps if they had cast Joe Pesci in the lead, since he's infinitely more charismatic then the guy who was cast.

a very surprisingly underrated movie. very realistic. and authentic .with great Dialogue. being Italian, i can definitely relate to the situations and phrases used. I thought Joe Cortese was great. as a crazy mob cowboy type, and pesci and Vincent were great also. I liked the actor Criscuolo who played the boss. He was very authentic. i think the director Ralph devito was on his way to great things , but was cut down too early , maybe because he knew too much. i thought it was great. it deserved more airplay and recognition. it was a sleeper movie. great. very good. it really had good authenticity. it was well done.

I have no idea who these others are but this movie is plain awful. They have to prop up Joe Pesci when he is a minor character. Bait and switch movie just like the studios did with Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey, etc. The DVD I watched states "this obscure gem revolves around JOe Pesci's MOB character who is a hothead that start a war" etc. etc. Joe plays the part of Joe, he does not even carry a gun, plays a whimpy character and gets SPOILER - (whacked). So much for the movie revolving around Pesci. The only halfway memorable scene was a bad attempt at comedy when they passed gas while waiting for a score. If you watch this movie after reading this, I warned you. Please stop and do not lose 87 minutes of your life.

THE DEATH COLLECTOR is truly a wonderful film. Labeled as a MEAN STREETS ripoff, it has some really great stuff in it. A lot of the stuff in this movie would later be used by Scorsese himself, including the actors - Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent, etc.