#Kill the irishman movie#
#Kill the irishman series#
#Kill the irishman tv#

At first, Birns serves as Greene’s sponsor and mentor. Christopher Walken, who is all over this list’s Top 100, is his usual kooky-scary self as Jewish mobster Shondor Birns. Kill the Irishman is helped by an outstanding cast. And in an industry that values silence, he’s the chattiest guy on the block. He’s the high school dropout who reads hardbound books, the cold-blooded murderer who celebrates Thanksgiving by handing out free turkeys to cops and neighbors.

#Kill the irishman tv#

He goes on TV to recklessly challenge his enemies to kill him, but at the same time worries about cholesterol in his diet.

#Kill the irishman series#

Lead actor Ray Stevenson, a native of Northern Ireland best known for his role as Titus Pullo in the HBO series Rome, plays Danny Greene as a complex figure-both a thug and a visionary. The script takes very few liberties with Porrello’s book, which traces Greene’s life from his impoverished youth to his exalted status as “the Robin Hood of Collingswood.”

#Kill the irishman movie#

The movie is based on the book To Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia by Rick Porrello, a suburban Cleveland police chief and author of three books on the mob.

But they don’t just feel like copies of the originals, in large part because the movie stays true to Greene’s real story. And Greene’s turn as an FBI informer who uses that status to enhance his criminal power will certainly remind you of Frank Costello in The Departed. The scenes where beleaguered longshoremen try to rise against corruption in their union will take you back to On the Waterfront. The opening shot-a flash forward to Greene surviving a car bombing that actually occurs later in the story-is a direct nod to the attempt on Ace Rothstein’s life at the start of Casino. There’s a lot packed into two hours.Īlong the way, Kill the Irishman borrows from some of the best gangster movies ever made. Greene’s story is told in the excellent 2011 biopic, Kill the Irishman, which covers his rise from lugging boxes as a stevedore to running a corrupt union to working as a mob enforcer to standing up to the new Mafia boss-Scalish’s replacement-looking to grab a percentage of Greene’s operation. It led to acting Los Angeles boss Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno-who knew the inner workings of La Cosa Nostra across the country-flipping to become one of the government’s most-important witnesses against the mob.Ī central figure in that combat was Danny Greene, known to all as “The Irishman.” All these years later, Greene has become a legend to certain constituencies, a charismatic mythical figure. The Cleveland wars sparked a chain reaction that shook the underworld structure in Milwaukee, Kansas City and other organized crime outposts. By the end of the year, 36 bombs had exploded around northeast Ohio and more than a dozen men were killed. They began with the death of Mafia boss John Scalish in 1976, leaving control of the city’s criminal enterprises and corrupt labor unions up for grabs. (2011–R)Ĭhances are you’ve never heard of the Cleveland Mob Wars. Ray Stevenson stars in Kill the Irishman.