Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
New York gangster Ben 'Bugsy' Siegel takes a brief business trip to Los Angeles. A sharp-dressing womanizer with a foul temper, Siegel doesn't hesitate to kill or maim anyone crossing him. In L.A. the life, the movies, and most of all strong-willed Virginia Hill detain him while his family wait back home. Then a trip to a run-down gambling joint at a spot in the desert known as Las Vegas gives him his big idea.
Bugsy is elevated primarily by Warren Beatty's charismatic and nuanced performance as the volatile, visionary gangster, with Annette Bening equally compelling as Virginia Hill — their real-life chemistry crackles on screen. The biographical crime drama is well-crafted but follows a fairly familiar rise-and-fall arc without pushing the genre into new territory. Barry Levinson's direction is polished and the period recreation is handsome, though cinematography is competent rather than exceptional. The film's novelty lies more in its romantic-obsessive angle on the Las Vegas origin myth than in any formal innovation. The ending, depicting Siegel's assassination, is dramatically effective but somewhat abrupt and unsurprising given the genre conventions.