Frank Vincent Movies
New Jersey-born character actor Frank Vincent is best known for playing threatening thugs and gangsters, but he actually started out working with Joe Pesci as a comedy duo during the early '70s. Before that, Pesci and Vincent had worked together in a honky tonk band, the Aristocrats, in which Pesci sang lead and Vincent played the drums. The duo broke up in 1975, but not before landing supporting roles as gangsters in the low-budget crime drama Death Collector. Afterward, Vincent disappeared from the entertainment industry until 1978, when he again encountered Pesci, who helped him land the part of Salvi, the gangster whom Pesci badly beats in Martin Scorsese's epic biography Raging Bull (1980). The former duo subsequently teamed in Dear Mr. Wonderful (1982), Scorsese's GoodFellas (1990), where Pesci gave Vincent a fatal beating, and in Casino, where the worm turned and Vincent got to kill Pesci. Vincent found fairly steady employment playing small supporting roles in films of widely varying quality through the early '90s. After appearing in Alan Rudolph's Mortal Thoughts and Spike Lee's Jungle Fever (1991), Vincent began getting larger screen roles. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Martin Scorsese's brutal character study incisively portrays the true rise and fall and redemption of middleweight boxer Jake La Motta, a violent man in and out of the ring who thrives on his ability (and desire) to take a beating. Opening with the spectacle of the over-the-hill La Motta (Robert De Niro) practicing his 1960s night-club act, the film flashes back to 1940s New York, when Jake's career is on the rise. Despite pressure from the local mobsters, Jake trusts his brother Joey (Joe Pesci) to help him make it to a title bout against Sugar Ray Robinson the honest way; the Mob, however, will not cave in. Jake gets the title bout, and blonde teenage second wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), but success does nothing to exorcise his demons, even as he channels his rage into boxing. Alienating Vickie and Joey, and disastrously gaining weight, Jake has destroyed his personal and professional lives by the 1950s. After he hits bottom, however, Jake emerges with a gleam of self-awareness, as he sits rehearsing Marlon Brando's On the Waterfront speech in his dressing room mirror: "I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody." Working with a script adapted by Mardik Martin and Paul Schrader from La Motta's memoirs, Scorsese and De Niro sought to make an uncompromising portrait of an unlikable man and his ruthless profession. Eschewing uplifting Rocky-like boxing movie conventions, their Jake is relentlessly cruel and self-destructive; the only peace he can make is with himself. Michael Chapman's stark black-and-white photography creates a documentary/tabloid realism; the production famously shut down so that De Niro could gain 50-plus pounds. Raging Bull opened in late 1980 to raves for its artistry and revulsion for its protagonist; despite eight Oscar nominations, it underperformed at the box office, as audiences increasingly turned away from "difficult" films in the late '70s and early '80s. The Academy concurred, passing over Scorsese's work for Best Director and Picture in favor of Robert Redford and Ordinary People, although De Niro won a much-deserved Oscar, as did the film's editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. Oscar or no Oscar, Raging Bull has often been cited as the best American film of the 1980s. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, (more)
- 1976
- R
Joe Pesci makes one of his earliest screen appearances in Family Enforcer. The main character, played by Joseph Cortese, is a New Jersey street kid who becomes mixed up with gangsters. After getting in over his head, the boy wants out, but this is not to be. Family Enforcer was also released as Death Collector, The Collector and The Enforcer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joe Cortese
