Lou Eppolito Movies

The police corruption scandal frequently sited as one of the worst in New York history comes to the big screen in director David Ayer's (Harsh Times) adaptation of Louis Eppolito and Bob Drury's book Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob. Louis Eppolito was a highly decorated police officer who, along with crooked cop Stephen Caracappa, was arrested in 2005 and found guilty of involvement in eight murders, a pair of attempted murders, one conspiracy to commit murder, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and distribution of drugs. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Bullets Over Broadway is a Woody Allen romp that, as the title suggests, combines gangsters with show business at the height of the Roaring Twenties. David Shayne (John Cusack) is a straight-arrow playwright who plans to stand firm against compromising his work, but quickly abandons that stance when his producer (Jack Warden) finds a backer to mount his show on Broadway. There's just one catch, however: the backer is a mobster (Joe Viterelli) who sees Shayne's play as a vehicle for his dizzy, talent-free girlfriend, Olive (Jennifer Tilly). Shayne also has to deal with the demands of veteran theatre diva Helen Sinclair (Dianne Wiest) and is shocked to discover that Olive's hitman bodyguard, Cheech (Chazz Palminteri), is probably a better playwright than he is, as he secretly revises Shayne's work when he sits in on rehearsals. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

Here's a fictionalized account of Jack Ruby's perspective of the events leading up to his assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. Danny Aiello appears convincingly as the nightclub-owner Ruby who (according to this telling) points the finger at an FBI conspiracy as the force behind the Kennedy assassination. The film includes some actual footage from Ruby's Oswald shooting. ~ Rovi

The demise of the Cold War rendered this flat and obsolete spy thriller, written and directed by Nicholas Meyer, mute upon its release in 1991. Gene Hackman plays Sam Boyd, a retired CIA agent, now making ends meet by engaging in industrial espionage. But Sam is recalled to duty and ordered to deliver a captured Russian spy, Pyiotr Grushenko (Mikhail Baryshnikov), to East Berlin for a prisoner exchange. Along with Pyiotr, Sam is also transporting $2 million in Columbian drug money to East Berlin. But due to a series of set-ups, Sam and Pyiotr finds themselves working together to keep from getting killed. Sam tries to get help from the CIA, but it turns out that the CIA (along with the KGB) wants them both dead. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Martin Scorsese explores the life of organized crime with his gritty, kinetic adaptation of Nicolas Pileggi's best-selling Wiseguy, the true-life account of mobster and FBI informant Henry Hill. Set to a true-to-period rock soundtrack, the story details the rise and fall of Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian New York kid who grows up idolizing the "wise guys" in his impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood. He begins hanging around the mobsters, running errands and doing odd jobs until he gains the notice of local chieftain Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino), who takes him in as a surrogate son. As he reaches his teens, Hill (Ray Liotta) is inducted into the world of petty crime, where he distinguishes himself as a "stand-up guy" by choosing jail time over ratting on his accomplices. From that moment on, he is a part of the family. Along with his psychotic partner Tommy (Joe Pesci), he rises through the ranks to become Paulie's lieutenant; however, he quickly learns that, like his mentor Jimmy (Robert DeNiro), his ethnicity prevents him from ever becoming a "made guy," an actual member of the crime family. Soon he finds himself the target of both the feds and the mobsters, who feel that he has become a threat to their security with his reckless dealings. Goodfellas was rewarded with six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture; Pesci would walk away with Best Supporting Actor for his work. ~ Jeremy Beday, Rovi