Filmmakers are pretty divorced from the lower classes, so their portrayals of the poor tend to gravitate towards the romantic (Disney films, say) or a "realist" approach that usually gets the dirt right without including the humanity (The Fighter).
Rob the Mob is part of the exclusive family of art that gets poverty right. Based on a true story, this heist movie about a poor couple who starts holding up mafia social clubs in New York has an almost Shakespearean quality in its honest portrayal of the main characters.
Tommy (Michael Pitt) and Rosie (Nina Arianda) are young miscreants"”working-class Italian New Yorkers with a penchant for smoking crack and petty thievery. They're also madly, genuinely, monogamously in love.
After the two get caught holding up a florists on Valentine's Day (so Tommy can give Rosie flowers), the two vow to make a clean start. They get jobs at a bill-collection call center (managed capably by Griffin Dunne as Dave, the motivational-slogan-spouting boss). They get clean. But when Tommy gets an idea to rip off the mob, the two are pulled into the world of New York's infamous crime families.
Rob the Mob is set apart by the great acting of the two leads. Pitt and Arianda have amazing chemistry. It's not easy for actors, especially smart ones, to play low-status characters with such depth and authenticity. But like a good Shakespearian bard, we end up hitting all the right notes: laughing at their ignorance and clownish behavior, feeling slightly reproachful of their dirtier habits, and loving them and rooting for them above all.
The supporting cast is also full of treasures"”Ray Romano was a fun watch as a New York Daily News reporter, and Andy Garcia brought true style to the usually overdone role of suit-wearing Mafioso.
There are a few rough spots. The relationship between Bobby and his family is handled a bit awkwardly"”it's not that there's something wrong with how they played it, except that it's the same way that trope has been used in the last ten movies of this genre. And Big Al is given a bit too many weepy lines"”some of his exposition and teaching-the-grandkid-how-to-make-rice-balls is hammier than the butcher shop he runs by day.
In spite of this, Rob the Mob is a well-done Bonnie and Clyde tale. Well worth seeing.
