'Mean Streets': What's a 'mook'? I guess it's another masterpiece

"In my mind it's not really a film -- it's a declaration of who I am and how I was living' -- Martin Scorsese.

Mean Streets is a movie that has earned legendary status because its the first film that really established some of Scorsese's trademark aesthetics and it was the first truly unflinching look at a certain crude side of urban culture to ever be on the big screen.

Looking at the movie now, it's a messy and somewhat not fully formed vision. It lacks the assuredness of some of Scorsese's latter pictures. And yet it has an undeniable power. It wears its religious symbolism on its sleeve but it works because it's such a deeply personal film.

To watch Mean Streets today is to marvel at the fact that for a brief period in the 1970s movies like it were even made.

The plot is meandering to say the least. It mostly revolves around the relationship between Charlie (Harvey Keitel) a deeply religious and conflicted character, which is based largely on Scorsese himself, and Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), a thoroughly unreliable but undeniably likable troublemaker who is constantly in debt to virtually everyone he knows.

One of the problems I've always had with the movie is that I never understood why Charlie is so loyal to Johnny Boy. De Niro's character is never particularly grateful to Keitel's for all the risks he takes on his behalf and by the end of the picture it's so clear that Johnny Boy is dragging Charlie down, possibly to his own demise that I struggle with understanding Charlie's motivations.

But I think part of that is because I am an atheist and Charlie, despite his myriad of sins, is a devout Catholic. He is riddled with guilt and feels a great sense of duty to family and friends. Keitel is excellent in this role. De Niro has the showy part -- and he practically rips through the screen with his mad energy, but Keitel really grounds the film, which like The Wolf of Wall Street has a tendency to to go off on tangents that are still in keeping with the theme.

Martin Scorsese

For instance, one of my favorites, and perhaps because I am an African-American, the most memorable -- is Keitel's brief infatuation with a gorgeous black go-go dancer.

In a voiceover, Keitel reveals his racial insecurities. He wants to date her but he fears the reaction of his Italian peers to his dating a black girl.

The fact that this 1973 film even delves into this interracial dating ambiguity feels revolutionary. It's apparent later in the movie that Charlie's friends are deeply racist.

In an unpleasant scene one character mocks another by telling him he once saw his girlfriend kissing a black man under a bridge. Charlie eventually picks up the black girl but then stands her up -- he can't go through with the date.

In the very last scene of the film -- which I won't spoil -- but let's just say it's dark and tragic, there is a quick shot of the black girl waiting on Keitel's character to show up. It's a quick flashback, and I presume an image in Charlie's mind. And I never noticed it really before. I think that shot is meant to suggest a choice that he now regrets.

Had Charlie ignored conventions and gone on that date maybe his life could have taken another path -- but instead he chose to keep close to the doomed Johnny Boy and his volatile, epileptic cousin (who Charlie is dating). And at that moment I connected with the film, cause I understand Charlie's regret of missed opportunities and his embarrassing bout of cowardice.

Ironically Scorsese was initially encouraged to make the film with an all black-cast to capitalize on the burgeoning blaxploitation genre. Go figure.