1 ½ stars
That’s Superboy!
While watching Mafia Wars, I kept feeling that I knew the lead actor from something else, something I used to watch all the time. I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me until about halfway through the movie. Maybe it was a gesture or a particular turn of phrase. Maybe that killer smile, which he didn’t use too often because he was supposed to be a tough ex-con going undercover in an Italian mon family. But suddenly, I knew.
That’s Superboy. That guy Terry in the black outfit. That’sTom Welling. From Smallville. Wow, he looks good for (pause the film while I look it up on imdb.com) gulp, 47. Time flies like the character he played for 217 episodes on the hit WB series almost a quarter century ago.
It’s odd to get sidetracked in the middle of a movie, but there wasn’t much else keeping my attention while watching Mafia Wars. Written and directed by Scott Windhauser (Death in Texas), Mafia Wars is a paint-by-numbers low-budget gangster movie that you’ll remember more for its missteps and mistakes than anything else. There’s a fight early on, for example, between the mob’s #2 guy, Griff (Cam Gigandet), and a police informant where Griff, who likes to be called The Reaper, pulls a knife and stabs him in the side. Only in the next cut of the film the informant’s got a knife in his throat. I stopped and watched it several times. Somehow, the knife in his side finds its way to his throat.
Hey, mistakes happen between a director and his editor, or in the case of Mafia Wars, three editors. They either didn’t see the knife mistake or didn’t have the money to fix it. It put me on alert to see what else they might have missed. While there was nothing as glaring as the magic knife, there’s also nothing so well done it balances out the boo-boo. You can only marvel at why so many Italian characters don’t speak Italian, even to each other. Pay close attention to Alabama native Chris Mullinaz in the role of Detective Lombardi, especially in his final scene.
The one saving grace of Mafia Wars is Gigandet’s intense overacting. He doesn’t just chew the scenery; he leaves teeth marks on your viewing screen. In a good way, too, because he’s hilarious. You can’t blame him for cranking up his talents to 11; he’s surrounded by actors who never plugged in. It’s the only entertainment to be found watching Mafia Wars, except for that A-HA! moment when you discover who is playing Terry.
