The year is 1960. Hope is in the air, Camelot beckons, and a previously unknown young actor named Peter Falk is about to make his cinematic debut in Murder, Inc.; a role so potent and unparalleled that it willed itself to an Oscar nomination. Not a single movie theater in America was prepared for it. Even today, 64 years later, it feels like a film out of time; far too contemporary for a nation that was still insisting on Doris Day and nun-centered musicals. Falk was the odd man out. He gulped each scene like he was being paid by the sneer. He was vicious, unfeeling, and without an ounce of benevolence. He was Abe Reles, mafia hitman.
Twenty minutes in, Abe has already racked up two vicious murders and one particularly nasty rape. Then he spits the first of many unforgettable lines: “I’m gonna tell you something about women…I never met one that didn’t need a rap in the head, and often.” Off-putting to say the least, but in Abe’s hands, a topic for debate. His unfailing logic extends to more than gender studies, of course. He’s a deal maker, a man who knows his worth on the open market. He agrees to take orders from kingpin Lepke Buchalter, knowing full well he’s going to do it his way. Which is quick, like, and with gusto. This man likes killing, and by god, anyone he’s ever knifed has had it coming. And haven’t they? Borrow money, expect to pay it back. Affect business, and we’ll have a talk, preferably near an open window. Once you ask a favor, the only guarantee is a date with the mortician.
Sure, Abe eventually agrees to testify and turn against the man who signs his checks, but he’s a survivor above all. Sure, we know the move is pure turncoat and will certainly get him killed, but there’s little dignity in taking a bullet for an employer. Consider another beautiful crush of dialogue: “Take, you see, what you can get your hands on, you take! Don’t ask questions! Take! What you want, take! What I want, I take! Nothing means nothing unless I got it! What do you got hands for! Huh? TAKE!” Spewed by a gangster, it’s but a childish defense of selfishness. From the mouth of a politician, an inspiring push for the American Dream. It’s all in who’s telling the tale. And at what volume.
Thankfully, the film that surrounds Abe Reles is a wonder of the age, and quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Sure, mafia movies are a sad cliché for modern audiences, but here was a taste of the life Eisenhower eyes had likely avoided. Murders were up close and personal, with blood to match. Marriages were sad little affairs, where wives didn’t even know how to boil an egg. Everyone was on the take, even washed-up comics in the Borscht Belt who hadn’t the sense to avoid a parking lot ice pick. All was beyond redemption and unlikely to get better. Not even a post-movie shower could wash away the filth. And at the center was Abe – “Kid Twist” to those in the know – the father to Columbo and a long, stellar career. And the first of many harbingers of doom to come.
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