Between Cuckoo and Fresh Kills last night I kill a few ours and stay up until late but I got to say it was worth it. Fresh Kills is a crime drama movie released in 2024 and is quite popular because of its approach to the MOB during the 80s and 90s. The movie is directed by Jennifer Esposito who is also one of the actors in the movie and the plot of the movie is based on a mob family living in Staten Island, New York but with the women’s point of view. It was established from the late 1980s up to the mid 1990s, it describes the two sisters as they start to grow up in this world of crime dominated by men, something that makes some of the girl felt overlooked. What interested me was how the film avoids most of the lets say cliche situations with mob films and focuses on the personal and mental aspects of being in a criminal organization within the family, what women on a mob family goes through and some decide to take things by her hands. It is a story of two sisters growing up, Rose and Connie Larusso role played by Emily Bader and Odessa A’zion, respectively, who try to grow up in a family which is involved in criminal activities led by their father. Esposito, who has acted in TV series such as ‘Blue Bloods’ and ‘NCIS’, has written, directed, produced and acted in the film where she plays the role of the girls’ mother, Francine. The movie has been applauded for describing the life of Staten Island in this period and for giving a voice to the female characters in the mafia narratives, it is a personal venture for Esposito who is said to have used her house as collateral to get the movie going when no one in Hollywood was willing to fund it.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15782954/
- Platform: AppleTV+
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Rose is the one who rebels and decides that she wants to change the family’s way of life and become a cosmetologist which is very daring especially given her circumstances, she is the woman who is in love with her family but at the same time wants to live a free life without any bonds to the family business, she wants a change. Bader has done a good job in portraying Rose’s inner conflict, as the rest of the cast you can tell how passionate they are, as they should be, most MOB movies are like this. On the other hand, Connie is like a storm that cannot be stopped, she is an extroverted woman who is very sure of herself and who is fully dedicated to the family business, its for this reason she feels that her father’s work is something that she should be proud of and not be embarrassed about, there is a certain scene where she gets into a fight with her friend over a relationship issue and it is quite evident that violence has become a natural part of her life.
The mothers and fathers in this story are not any less complicated than their children with Joe Larusso, role played by Domenick Lombardozzi is a stereotypical mafia boss, who is also a family man but the movie did not focus too much on the criminal aspect of the character, we get to know him only through the eyes of his daughters and wife since the movie is more about the female characters of the family. Francine, the mother character portrayed by Jennifer Esposito is in the middle of the conflict, she has to watch her daughters taking different paths and try to manage them best as she can while struggling to maintain her family while at the same time coming to terms with the fact that they are in a bad situation. In one of the scenes she is telling Rose about how she almost got into modeling, it’s as if she is telling Rose not to follow the same path that she followed.
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I was particularly fascinated by the portrayal of the mob culture in the movie and this is because the movie does not describe the mob culture in the conventional manner, not your classic controlling an area, dealing or hiring for kill, we do not have many cases of violent crimes or the wild west style shootouts. We get to know how this culture influences the routine life of the women in the family, like how the girls are supposed to act or how their mother has to maintain the image. This is a rather suspense and thriller feeling, it is as if at any moment something bad is going to happen, but it’s not a kind of danger which you will meet in the action movie, it’s more so the psychological one. It is in the way that characters don’t say what they want to say, in the cars that seem to follow the characters, in the rules that are not written down.
On the other hand, some people who watched the movie did explain how they had some complaints regarding the pacing of the movie, some also mentioned that the story seemed rather incoherent, particularly because of the time shifts, some people also complained that the movie could have explored more on the father’s criminal life to give more background on the family’s plight. All this is understandable because this is not your classic mob movie view from the male point, from the dealing drugs and killing each other to control the streets.
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On one hand it is optimistic because Rose is at last beginning to take charge of her life and trying to change the pattern for the next generation, but it’s also a bit of a tragedy because it highlights how much has been forgotten in the process. Connie is dead, the family is broken and Rose has to leave everything she has ever known and just run away.
I think this is also a very ambiguous ending, one of the reasons why people would also be mad at the film, imagine jumping into a "MOB" movie to find out its a women inside the MOB and going out the theater empty handed because the ending left questions without answers, so no MOB and lots of questions, this is the case on your most average audience who is there for the adrenaline and dopamine. The movie is mostly about emphasizing on the power of women in such circumstances without going into the now days called "woke" territory, during the movie you can tell how the women in this family are supposed to be passive and supportive, and it is Rose who decides to break free and start a new life.
Once again I think I have said it all about this movie, in my opinion it was a good movie but before watching people need to understand what it is about, because if not you will be expecting something totally different and be disappointing on the film. From the directing, backdrop, costumes, the movie did a great job at trying to represent the 80s and 90s of the MOB times in NY. I wont lie and nothing is perfect, there were some scenes felt a bit slow and could have been further elaborated. This is a 100% drama movie with next to no action considering what a classic mafia movie, over all not a movie that I would watch many times but I did enjoy it, a movie good enough to kill a few hours and still feel satisfied.
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