The 1990s also saw innovative interpretation of law enforcement's role in the perpetuation of organized crime. One of the most notable examples is L.A. Confidential (1997), in which corruption has reached so deep into the Los Angeles police department that two seemingly unrelated criminal investigations both lead to the police chief. The genre also proved its adaptability and continued appeal with Heat (1995) and Carlito's Way (1993); both films starred Al Pacino, and Heat brought Pacino together with De Niro in two of the most memorable scenes in the pair's careers.
Prior to 1999, however, the gangster genre had not successfully expanded to television. But in January of this year, HBO's the Sopranos debuted with considerable critical acclaim. Again, the emphasis of the Sopranos, directed by David Chase, was upon realism. One of the most powerful appeals of the series was the portrayal of the delicate balance the main protagonist, Tony Soprano, works to maintain between life at home, and his life as an organized crime member. Like the Godfather and Goodfellas, the Sopranos take the biographical approach to the gangster genre. By working this methodology into television, the Sopranos is often credited with initializing a trend of bringing significantly more artistry to television dramas; many of the HBO series that followed -- such as Oz, the Wire, and Deadwood -- continued this trend of complex plot lines combined with authenticity and violent realism.
Organized crime films, on the other hand, have seen something of a subsidence in recent years, but have continued to show their resilience, and reflect the seemingly limitless interest American audiences have in the criminal element. One of the most original contributions to the crime film was Sin City (2005), which was a comic book style adaptation of Frank Miller's urban gothic stories. Though crime films in general have not slowed down to any reasonable extent, it would seem that the influence of the Godfather, Goodfellas, and more recently, the Sopranos has made filmmakers wary of approaching the bio-epic approach to American gangster stories, for fear of falling short of the immense success of these pieces of work.
In many ways, these three gangster-based film/television adaptations are very similar. The most obvious similarity is their apparent concern for creating realistic characters and situations. All three attempt to accomplish this by firmly establishing the cultural setting in which Italian organized crime has survived for the better part of a century. This should not be altogether surprising since all three directors -- Scorsese, Coppola, and Chase -- are all of Italian descent and, in many ways, have been exposed to the underpinnings of organized crime through much of their lives. Accordingly, the audience is not presented with the mythic, bigger-than-life characters who dominated the gangster movies of the early portion of the twentieth century. Instead, the very human and relatable qualities of these characters are juxtaposed against their oftentimes violent and reprehensible actions as gangsters. The protagonists are neither clearly heroes nor clearly villains; this makes them, in many ways more compelling, and certainly more complex. This also reflects the increased level of sophistication among American movie goers and television viewers; they expect to be presented with characters and storylines that are believable because, after all, the existence of organized crime has remained a very real facet of American life for generations. So, of course, bringing an understandable element to this lifestyle aids viewers in comprehending how such violent individuals can actually exist.
The Godfather movies clearly represent a turning point in the method of the biographical approach to crime films. Prior to the Godfather, gangsters had rarely been treated with much empathy in the movies, and their characters had not been granted any significant levels of psychological depth or feeling. Coppola broke with this tradition, and attempted to represent the organized crime families of the United States as operating in a way similar to a feudal society. From this standpoint, the Corleone family was depicted as something of a royal family within the mafia underworld; in this way, the violent actions of the main characters and, particularly, the transformation of Michael Corleone from a "civilian" into the...
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