One Paragraph Movie Review: Little Caesar

Three hundred and twenty-eighth film: Little Caesar, for all intents and purposes the original gangster film. Edward G. Robinson plays Rico — nicknamed Little Caesar by a Chicago crime boss — a small-time crook who dreams of, and through multiple bullets achieves, the big time. I feel like I’ve just seen a fresh dinosaur egg laid in my lap — this is ALL the gangster tropes before they were tropes. It’s a delicious genre omelette that Scorcese and De Palma have borrowed the recipe for. Da boys in da gang introduced by their nicknames as the camera lingers briefly on each of them. Little guy breaking the rules and pissing off the bigger guys to become THE big guy. Gangster’s molls, jaunty-angled fedoras, pinstripe suits, pocket watches, and apparently the birth of the word “see” after every sentence, see. Innovate unless you’re yella, see, ya dirty…. look, it’s all there. Except for guns hidden in violin cases, which I was totally expecting, but without violins there’s still violence. Good. Three murdered crime commissioners out of five.