User Reviews

GANGLAND

This is a terrible movie that normally I would not watch but I was desperate. I have no recollection of its being released. It's a 1987 release, and I was reviewing films at that time so possibly it went straight to VHS. Its not even listed under this title on the IMDb but as The Vern Miller Story after the famous gangster. That's right, while I'd never heard of Vern Miller there was a real life gangster named Vern Miller, and this kinda is his story. Not any more inaccurate than most screen biographies, but maybe a little less. But what has me bowels in an uproar about this film is not so much how terrible it is, but how wonderful the visuals are. How can a film be so terrible but look so good? It means virtually writing two reviews for the same movie. Its easy to dissect the shortcoming of the scripted and directed parts of the film but far more difficult to praise the visuals. Actually the excellent visuals highlight the dramatic shortcomings. Action sequences are non sequiturs with succeeding scenes failing to follow up on the action. They're sort of stranded and exist on to themselves. There is no dramatic timeline, no progression, no development of themes. Characters pop in and out of the narrative without much individuality. Its hard to know who these people are and what their connection is to each other and Vern Miller. Miller is talked about as something special but beyond being a cold blooded killer he doesn't seem particularly adept. The opening, pre credit sequence is a good example.

A couple of what are usually described as "jazz babies" are seen on a country road in a roadster. He is wearing what's supposed to be a raccoon coat, he has a silver flask which he places playfully in his girlfriend's crotch. Suddenly a sedan rolls across the road and the roadster hits it and stops. Out steps Scott Glenn and it comes to pass that he identifies himself by taking out two huge revolves from shoulder holsters and shoots his initials in the door of the sedan. Then the movie credits begin. What have we just seen? Was it a robbery? Car hijacking. A kidnapping? Double murder? Who knows, but its never referred to again. Its is visceral and emotional in that it seems as though there is some menace in this highway stop, but its never followed up. This recalls similar scenes in Bonnie & Clyde and Badlands, both with radically different results, but this has NO resolution. What did I just see? It was well photographed, but what just happened?

The rest of the picture is like that. Vern Miller goes to work for Al Capone (not factual), and I guess because of the budget, he is not seen in an elaborate office or swank restaurant surrounded by sycophants, but in a cramped room. The actors surround this Capone are mostly bland and faceless, small town preppy guys with no personalities. In fact all of the actors seem recruited from a college drama department or a dinner theater. No character develops, they just are. I found myself living that old Jerry Seinfeld routine where a guy watching a movie can'r distinguish between the different actors. "Wait, is that the same guy? Oh, its a different guy. Or is it?"

The women are just as interchangeable and act like middle school seductresses. Adventurous crimes are flattened out like a sheet of paper that needs to be folded like origami to resemble something. Its just monotonous and mundane. A mundane gangster film, how did they do that? The thing just dribbles on until the climactic set piece, the raison d'être of the film, which is a recreation of the famous Kansas City Massacre, when a gang tried to free Frank Jelly Nash, a notorious bank robber, being transferred under FBI custody. They made their attack in front of the Kanas City train station.

No doubt the budget was very small, so instead of a big city location, a hick town of the type where looking three blocks in any direction reveals wheat fields was used. It reminds me the Monty Python gag where two groups of housewives stage the Battle of Hastings by attacking each other with handbags. The action is fast and confusing. Maybe as confusing as in real life as its now generally acknowledged that the deaths were mainly the result of wild police gunfire. Four cops and Frank Nash all died. The FBI claimed that Adam Richetti and Pretty Boy Floyd were Miller's accomplices but that was probably one of Hoover's ploys to arm the FBI and give them powers of arrest. Richetti was later captured and executed for the crime. So this is a total botch. You have to figure they could have done better in finding an urban setting for the shoot out. The rest is anti climax.

The real Miller was found dead near Detroit in what has been assumed was a mob hit in retaliation with for the failure of the Kansas City job or more probably killing a New Jersey gangster. Which reminds me there is no sense of geography in this picture. Its all back roads and lonely stores and rural gas stations. people speak with generic drawls. Dialogue scenes are difficult to hear and conversations flaccid. But everything looks great. There are close ups in perfect focus. Medium shots perfectly lit. Long shots artistically framed. They're even reasonably joined together but they're not enough to tell a story.

As a native Kansas Citian and fan and somewhat of a historian of the Melvin Purvis, gangland era, I came across this flick the other day. The station ran it as "Gangland." As someone else commented, the movie has the look of a 1970s movie as far as film stock instead of almost 1990. In fact it could pass as an extended episode of The Wild, Wild West. I came in after the movie started so it took me a while to figure that the character of Al Capone was actually the actor I never would have thought him to be. He appeared to be channeling Brando, or trying to. I didn't find Miller a particularly interesting character either; the director seemed to want him in bed with as many women as possible to justify the diagnosis of syphilis even though having VD didn't seem to slow down either Capone or Miller in that regard nor did it appear to bother the many ladies either although they must have known - didn't everybody? But the film really lost me during the Kansas City Massacre. Who did they think they were fooling with that ramshackle train depot? Anybody whose been to KC knows it has one of the most magnificent train stations in the world that dates from around 1917. The credits revealed location shots were in Alabama. I guess they were too lazy to come up to KC or couldn't even look for stock footage of the depot. All in all- an OK flick if you have nothing else to do.

Verne Miller is a painfully slow and talky gangster film that doesn't have enough action scenes to make it worth watching. Miller was a real-life ex-South Dakota sheriff who become a gangster in the late 1920s. The story has him going to Chicago to become a hitman for Al Capone (badly played by Thomas G. Waites). Capone is impressed by Miller's shooting skills, and makes him a right-hand man in his organization. When Miller hears that a friend of his is being held by the FBI in Kansas City, he goes there against Capone's orders to try and free him. The rescue operation, however, goes terribly wrong and several policemen and Miller's friend are killed. The incident becomes known as "The Kansas City Massacre". In real life, Miller became a gunman after Capone's imprisonment, and never worked for him at all. The Kansas City Massacre was a true event, but there was never any mention of Capone. To say the least, this film is a confusing mess of historical mishmash. AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS!!!